I have always tried to keep my life in perspective with my ego under control. That effort has been helped enormously by a wife and three kids who have never taken me too seriously and who have always held above me an imaginary oxygen mask ready to drop down whenever I needed a whiff of reality. The first time I came home looking sharp in the new battle dress camouflage fatigues the Army adopted in the 1980s, my daughter Annemarie, then about twelve, merely looked up from watching television and announced, “Mom, the GI Joe doll is home.”
Over time, others have helped me keep my ego down. After I retired, I was invited to give a speech to a large luncheon event in Boston. There were about two thousand guests and you needed two tickets, one to get into the room, and the second for the waitress to verify that you had paid for lunch. I was escorted to the round head table by the event’s chairman. As the waitress placed salads before each guest, she asked for meal tickets. She passed by me without giving me a salad. When it was time for the next course she passed me by again. That was when the chairman realized what was going wrong. Mortified, he said to the waitress, “Young lady, this is General Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, our honored guest and keynote speaker.” Her simple, no-nonsense response was “He ain’t got no ticket, huh?” The chairman produced a ticket for me. I was getting hungry.
I love when people do their job. Doing your job well, with someone watching, without inflating your self-importance or showing off, is not easy.
Some years ago, there was a human interest segment about a street sweeper on the evening news. I think he worked in Philadelphia. He was a black gentleman and swept streets the old-fashioned way, with one of those wide, stiff bristle brooms and a wheeled garbage can. He had a wife and several children and lived in a modest home. It was a loving family, and he had high ambitions for his children. He enjoyed his job very much and felt he was providing a worthwhile service to his community. He had only one professional ambition in life and that was to get promoted to drive one of those mechanized street sweepers with big round brushes.
He finally achieved his ambition and was promoted to driving a street sweeping machine. His wife and children were proud of him. The television piece closed with him driving down the street; a huge smile was on his face. He knew who he was and what he was.
I run that video piece through my mind every few months as a reality check. Here is a man happy in his work, providing an essential service for his community, providing for his family, who love and respect him. Have I been more successful in what is truly important in life than he has been? No, we have both been fortunate. He has touched all the important bases in the game of life. When we are ultimately judged, despite my titles and medals, he may have a few points on me, and on a lot of others I know.