All posts by Keith Thompson

Ideals are peaceful but history is violent

Family, Life

Brad Pitt, the actor, is not usually the person to use a quote from, ha, but in the movie “Fury” he made that quote and it was reported that Brad adlibbed and said this quote off script. Once they thought about the quote, they left it in the movie because it was a very true statement.

The statement was “Ideals are peaceful but history is violent.”

If you just take a walk through history you will know that this is true. If you look at the past conflicts and wars such as Vietnam, Koran war, and of course Adolf Hitler and Germany during WWII, Japan during WWII, WWI ,Civil War and all the way back to the Revolutionary war, they are started with a great and peaceful ideology that turned in a bloody war.

Ideology is usually said when the person saying it is safe, warm and secure and it is usually their ideology that they want to impose on the other party.

As I went about my life this past weekend I was reminded of what a price our fathers and grandfathers and their fathers before them paid so we could be safe and live our lives as we decide. Yesterday in Sunday school there was a question if we had ever been persecuted for our faith or not. The answer is that no one in that room has ever been persecuted. You may have had your feelings hurt over faith but nothing that would approach persecution. I am reminded of Hitler who wanted to impose his socialist ideology on all the countries around Germany including the Jewish people. That was persecution. What we have experienced is maybe a little shunning from other people, hurt feelings now and then and the occasional bruised ego.

You think of all the past wars and where they were fought and what the conditions were and the men and women waking up every day not knowing if they would be alive that night. Those soldiers watched their friends die around them and fought with all their hearts to simply stay alive and come home to their families and live in freedom.

The image of being a parent taking your son or your daughter to report for active duty is an image that has played out millions of times for fathers and mothers across America. Thank God I never had to take my daughters to report for duty. I am simply thankful for our lives

My point is the next time you have an easy weekend or a day that is maybe a little stressful, I believe we should all have a reality check on what price was paid so we can go about our lives in freedom. When you see a soldier in uniform, go up to him or her and thank them.

Accross history there has been many people who thought they were leaders and who dispensed their form of ideology. What you will always note from history is that the person wants to be in charge of the ideological setting. None of those people want to be the ones that are controlled by someone else. In every situation they wanted to be in charge.

Sometimes being thankful starts with an inventory of our lives, our families, our safety and where we live. KT

Be Bold

Career, Life

This is something I used to tell my daughters when they were little. I remember telling them this before they would leave for events they were involved in, dates, try outs, sports teams and generally regarding how to live their life. I would even say it as I prayed for them. It seems that the term has become quite popular these days and used often in advertising, retail and even has been made into bracelets.

I was with a good friend one time in Maryland and he had a prescription that he wanted to drop off at the pharmacy to be filled. I asked him if was going to drop it off and come back later and he said “no I am going to get it filled right now.” He told me that many things in life can be handled much better if we act bold and give the appearance of what we expect. I thought about this while he in fact walked into the pharmacy and got his prescription filled within a few minutes. The people at the pharmacy just simply did as he requested. He was bold yet kind and polite at the same time. He just went in with the attitude of expectancy.

This is a fine line of life but a very true and very important lesson. If you have confidence when you start something, it usually sets the attitudes and the way things will go as compared to going in with your head down and shy.

The funny thing is that boldness comes from “acting” bold even though you may not feel it at the moment. It is like when the bible speaks of “calling things that be not as though they were.” It means that the way you actually feel can be changed by how you act like you feel. Let me say that again. The way you actually feel can be changed by how you act like you feel. Therefore even if you don’t feel bold at the moment, by acting like you feel bold somehow changes you to actually feel bold. It is a mental and physical decision rather than an emotional decision.

As many of you know, I stutter when I talk and I have been like this all my life. I have learned that acting bold and acting confident helps my speech. If I let my guard down and go into a meeting with my head down I seem to stutter worst. When I do to myself what I am saying in this blog, I am actually making myself feel bold and confident even though I may not feel that way.

Jesus Christ told us to “imitate” him and I can tell you he was never beaten down or felt inferior and shy. The opposite was in fact true, in that he was always bold and never backed down to anyone. So I guess if you need to imitate anyone, Jesus Christ is the best example there is. It also goes without saying that if you are a Christian, that Jesus Christ lives within your heart, therefore imitating him doesn’t seem like the wrong thing to do.

Be Bold in everything you say and do and be the example God wants you to be. KT

Ruining your life usually takes time

Family, Life

People usually don’t ruin their life all at once. It is usually decisions over a period of time. That said, you can go out this afternoon and rob a bank, and it will pretty much put your life in downward spiral all at once. Most of the time, ruining your life is a culmination of small decisions made over a long period of time.

If you haven’t read the story of Samson in the Bible, this story defines what I am saying. I heard Andy Stanley speak on this a few months ago, and it stayed with me. I won’t go into the whole story as you can read it for yourself, but Samson was a very physically powerful man who was chosen by God. His main instruction was to never tell anyone where his strength comes from (his uncut hair) because if people knew where his strength came from, they could destroy him. He had a weakness for women, and one woman in particular was Delilah. She would ask him where his strength came from and to make a long story short, he toyed with her and kidded with her over this issue and eventually told her his secret. She deceived him and told his secret to the people that were trying to kill him; he basically died a blind and broken man.

He didn’t die because he did one thing wrong. He died because he played with and toyed with the gift God had given him. He died a shameful death because he couldn’t control himself.

He played with that area of his life where he was vulnerable and little by little, it cost him his life. The New Testament speaks many times of “The” sin that so easily makes us stumble, and I believe we all have a “The” sin that we need to be very careful around and to watch very closely in our lives. To some it is eating, to others it is worry, inferiority, fear, sex, drinking, alcohol, gambling and the list could go on and on.

I remember when I was a child how we would watch a scary TV show and how afraid I would be the whole time. I remember my dad Gene would always wait until that precise moment when the bad guy would jump out, and Gene would grab me and scare the living daylights out of me. The more movies a person watches that are scary, the more they get comfortable with them. It is the same with any weakness in our lives. If we keep letting that thing in our lives slowly get to us, we could be putting ourselves at risk just like Samson.

Enough said on this subject. Anyone reading this knows what the point is. We should heed the story of Samson because he lost his life, his purpose, his calling, and opportunity to do something great with his life. KT

Timeless classic

Life

I have an old Jeep Grand Wagoneer and to me, it is a timeless classic. It is a 1988 Wagoneer with the wood grain down the sides with whitewall tires and old school technology. It is mostly original and unchanged from the day it was new. I simply love the Wagoneer.

I guess what I love most about it is the memories it stirs within me. This is the third one I have owned and with each one, I swore I would never buy another one. Well, here I have another one. I bought the first one when both of my daughters were little, and we would take it camping and on trips and it was my main vehicle at the time. I have memories of my babies riding in the back seat, talking to me about their day and what they were thinking about, and asking questions about everything. I also remember going to get ice cream in that old Wagoneer and seeing my children full of joy and full of wonder.

So, my old Wagoneer stays in the garage and is always clean and ready to go. From time to time, I will go to the garage just to look at it and occasionally start it up and listen to it run. The week of Christmas, I drove it for a couple of days to the office and to lunch. One of those days, my youngest daughter happened to be at the office and happened to be available to go lunch with me in the Wagoneer. Having one of my babies (27 years old) ride with me in the old Jeep that day was a memory I will keep forever because I will add that memory to the ones I already have.

You will think I have lost it here, but I drink coffee every morning all year long out of a Christmas cup because there are so many great and fond memories of Christmas around our house. I get that Christmas cup out every morning because it makes me smile, and I believe it even makes the coffee taste better. Ha

I find that there are things in our lives that have meaning and fond memories; we should keep those things close because they bring us joy. Some would say to strip all the old out of our lives to replace it with the new. I don’t think so. Having some of the old with us helps us to walk in the new. KT

At some point you don’t have the experience

Career, Life

This was a statement that Tom Brady, the quarterback for the New England Patriots, made last week in an interview. If you follow football, you know that the New England Patriots are playing in the big game in a few weeks.

What you may not know is that Tom Brady is 37 years old and has played NFL football for 15 years. In football years, a 37 year old playing in the NFL is clearly in the outside realm of age.

When I read the statement in the news it gave me pause because it is a very profound statement. It means there is a time when you are effective at what you are doing, and there is a time when your ability to continue being effective changes. I was reminded of this last week in Miami at a presentation. I was presenting Hotel AG to a group of 15 bankers in a conference room. I was doing what I have always done and about halfway through the presentation, I realized that I was 20-25 years older than everyone else in that room.

I may have thought I was still effective, but that presentation would have been much more effective had I sent one of the young bucks to handle it. I call it the magic years. What I mean is there is a period of time in your life when you are most effective; the real challenge is knowing when that period is still ongoing or that period has passed. I have had clients in the hotel business that were very successful for a period in their life. Some of those same people tried to do it again, thinking they would be as successful as the first time only to find out that the magic has passed.

So, the comment from Tom Brady was really spoken out of wisdom that he was at the end of one career and probably at the beginning of another. I believe the real wisdom is to know and accept changes in our lives and embrace the fact that there is a time to be effective in certain areas of our lives and a time to begin to be effective in others. I think of fatherhood and obviously my role as a father has changed to be more of an encourager, counselor, and helper to my children as compared to the role I played when my daughters were young.

You ask what my point is. The point is to know where you are so you can be as effective as possible without continuing to try and live in the past and on past accomplishments. KT