The Eagle Charge
Thoughts on lessons learned, from one Eagle Scout to those who come after.
My grandfather was an Eagle Scout. His two sons are Eagle Scouts. I and my three brothers are all Eagle Scouts. My nephew is an Eagle Scout. One might say this has been a family tradition.
For you, the new Eagle Scout, I offer this charge as you carry the tradition forward in your own life and in your own family.
To do that, I will set aside a lot of mystique and tradition, and break it down to some fundamental lessons it truly teaches. Is Eagle important because you learn first aid? How to pitch a tent? Who your senator is? Those things are fine and good to know, but they are not the things Eagle teaches.
I submit to you instead three things. These are things Eagle has begun to teach you, whether you know it or not. Recognizing these things now is important, because true mastery will take many years to come, and each of these three things carries with it responsibility and obligation. Once you’ve learned how to do a thing, you can no longer pretend you can’t do it. So listen carefully.
Lesson the First: Delayed Gratification
Earning Eagle is a slow and complicated process. It takes a while. In fact, the last three ranks require almost a year and a half to complete by themselves. Why?
Forcing that wait means that you can’t do the whole thing during a single rush of laser-focused work. Waiting means that your motivation may cool. It means you may fail at some things and need to try them again. You can really evaluate how bad you want it when you must work and wait for it. Forcing that kind of wait means it takes real emotional investment to finish. And learning how to finish what you start (especially when you can’t see the finish line) is a critical life skill.
Eagle has taught you that some things are worth working and waiting for. Remember that. Having seen it work while earning your Eagle rank, it is your responsibility now to recognize that some lessons are learned slowly. Your obligation is to be patient with yourself and with your learning.
Lesson the Second: Leadership
The big kahuna Eagle requirement is “the project”. Why does that matter? What’s the point? It’s not putting a bench in a park, repainting a gazebo, rehabbing a hiking trail, or hanging backpack hooks.
No. The point is leadership.
The quiet lesson of the Eagle project (and one that will take you years to fully grasp) is that as a leader you must evaluate the capabilities of the people you’re leading. Not everybody can do everything. Some will be amazing. Some will be hard workers but uncreative. Some will be rivals. Some will simply be incompetent, and their contribution consists of being put somewhere they can do the least damage. Some people are just better at things than others.
Your Eagle project put a spotlight on this natural inequality and forced you to look at it. A scout running an Eagle project must figure out who can perform in which function, and assign the right people to the right jobs, so the larger task gets done. It is arguably unjust to demand more of some and accept less from others. But it is a reality that cannot be ignored.
And it’s what makes real leadership a little bit lonely. Not everyone can do it. Not everyone can handle the responsibility of making those decisions. And if you can’t handle it, that’s a hard thing to face.
Having seen this as you earned your Eagle rank, you have seen how to make these choices. Be aware that you will, over the course of the rest of your life, have to evaluate people. You will make hard choices about who is a decent person and who is safe to have around you. Not every decision will be the right one. You will learn more, and harder, lessons. But those lessons will be invaluable in the rest of your life.
People will need you to lead them. It will be your responsibility to do so. Smart people will recognize it in you and look to you. Smart and brave people may even ask you. And when that need arises, recognize that you have an obligation to stand in the gap and meet that need. Do not shy away from it.
Lesson the Third: Meekness
The first two lessons can feel harsh. They can make you callous. Or worse, arrogant. After all, these lessons require you to rank tasks and people. You have seen how to evaluate tasks and then use people to get those tasks done. But you have also seen how to help your fellows in their own tasks. You have served just as much as you have led. Part of putting people in places where they’re effective means recognizing that sometimes a task will appear that nobody is able to do alone. So you have a responsibility: to be ready and available to help those people perform those tasks.
It will be easy to think you’re better than the rest of your team. But I’ve never met an Eagle scout who bragged about it. Eagles state the existence of their award, but they don’t strut it (especially as they age). Why?
Here’s why: Leadership (the ability to effectively divvy a task up within a team) plus Delayed Gratification (the ability to keep working on a task even when the finish line isn’t visible from the starting point), produces what a philosopher named David Bednar calls Meekness: that is, strength under control.
According to Bednar, meekness:
often is misunderstood in our contemporary world. Meekness is strong, not weak; active, not passive; courageous, not timid; restrained, not excessive; modest, not self-aggrandizing; and gracious, not brash. A meek person is not easily provoked, pretentious, or overbearing and readily acknowledges the accomplishments of others.
Meekness is the principal protection from the prideful blindness that often arises from prominence, position, power, wealth, and adulation.
Are you better than your peers? Some of them, yes. You are an elite young person, and inequality is inescapable. But being an Eagle, you have the obligation to recognize that when you are better, you must help those who are not. And when you are not, you have the responsibility to accept help to improve. You have seen the beginnings of meekness as you have earned your Eagle rank. Continue.
Everything in scouting leads to those three things. Every point in the Scout Oath and Law folds into those three things. Remember them, practice them, and continue always to be open to lessons learned. To this pursuit, pledge your sacred honor.