La Vanguardia

Scouts need to be smart and brave. They venture out ahead of the group into uncharted territory. They move toward "the enemy" (in this case, "the unknown" will suffice) in small units of one to three individuals. They don't have the safety and security of numbers and therefore need to be courageous. They also have to be critical thinkers, able to weigh new information, because there is no one to tell them what to do. Their job is to explore and send back important information to the larger group.*

In the journey to ourselves we are our own scout. In our profession or field, we need more scouts. Humanity needs scouts.

My courage comes from my deep (longtime) faith. If God inspires me to go where not many have been, I trust in the direction. Standing still is scarier.

I read this passage in a Time or Life magazine article recently:

"When he presented his findings to colleagues, he was greeted with hoots and jeers. 'Heart disease was supposed to be all about genetics or adult lifestyle factors,' says Barker, now 72 and a professor of the University of Southampton in England and at Oregon Health and Science University. 'People scoffed at the idea that it could have anything to do with intrauterine experience.' Barker persisted, however, amassing evidence of the connection between birth weight and heart disease in many thousands of individuals. For years the idea was known as the Barker hypothesis. In time his idea began to win converts..."

Being a vanguard requires developing a thicker skin and having a laser focus in order to be persistent in the face of public scoffing. It requires time for wild imagining. Sometimes drawing inspiration from the transcendental force means seeing things, envisioning, imagining things not yet seen. In the book, Stumbling Upon Happiness, Daniel Gilbert notes that what distinguishes humans from other animals is the capacity to think about the future:

"To see is to experience the world as it was, but to imagine - ah, to imagine is to experience the world as it isn't and has never been, but as it might be. The greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real, and it is this ability that allows us to think about the future. As one philosopher noted, the human brain is an 'anticipation machine,' and 'making future' is the most important thing it does."

What other tools are needed for this journey?


*Thanks to my husband for describing the specific attributes of scouts for this post.