Fifty-five priests gathered around him, watching in awe. Because this moment was foreign to them. None of them have children. None have grandchildren. In the Catholic tradition, priests take a vow of celibacy.

But Pat Bruen had been married to the love of his life for over 40 years.

That was his first vocation:

To love his wife.

To raise their children.

To work hard and provide.

And when his wife became ill—and eventually passed away—Pat heard God calling him again. This time, to the priesthood.

As the Archbishop of Detroit laid hands on him and he became “Father Pat,” something hit me deeply:

We don’t have just one vocation and it's not limited to 'holy orders'. We all have many.

Because a vocation is simply a calling from God.

Our work—whatever it is—is not separate from this calling. Whether we're leading a company, writing code, changing diapers, or managing spreadsheets, if we're doing it with purpose, love, and for the glory of God—that is a vocation.

St. Jose Maria Escriva said it perfectly: "work is man’s original vocation. It is a blessing from God, and those who consider it a punishment are sadly mistaken."

And God is always calling.

The hard part is listening. And responding.

At that Mass, surrounded by Fr. Pat’s three children and fifteen grandchildren, I found myself asking the same question he once did:

“God, what are You asking of me?”

He’s asking.

My prayer is that, like Fr. Pat, I hear Him—and answer

.

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Recently, someone told me they “really need my optimism.”
 
It caught me off guard. I’m not an optimist.
 
I’m not optimistic about the future of Illinois. For that matter, I’m not optimistic about the future of America. That’s because optimism is an unrelenting feeling that everything is going to turn out well.
 
I don’t think things will naturally get better. Being positive and ignoring realities will never solve a problem.
 
Instead, I believe we need to have a radically honest view of reality.
 
Which is why I am hopeful. I believe positive change is possible.
 
Hope takes action. Hope takes courage. Hope takes energy.
 
This may seem subtle, but it’s not.
 
Both of my parents died decades before reaching retirement. Neither met the love of my life, Anna. Neither held their grandchildren.
 
Despite that stark, genetic double whammy, I hope I will be at my children’s weddings. I hope I will see them become adults.
 
I don’t hold some blind belief that everything will be OK. Rather, because I understand the reality of the situation, I am taking active steps.
 
Every day I come to work, I pack my suit in a backpack and run the 3 miles. I ride my bicycle home.
 
I am very cautious and aware of what I eat, every day.
 
I don’t smoke. I rarely drink.
 
Am I optimistic I will live until I’m 90? Of course not.
 
But I am hopeful I will live a long life and see those weddings. I’m working on it every day.
 
Between you and me, it’s really hard.
 
I hate running. Even on beautiful days, I do not enjoy it. But it’s even worse when it’s minus 10 and icy.
 
I’ve never enjoyed a salad in my life. I really love chocolate.
 
It’s hard, yet in this difficult journey I find hope.
 
I should mention, the danger is not in optimism.
 
In fact, Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman wrote in his breakthrough book, “Thinking Fast and Slow,” “If you were allowed one wish for your child, seriously consider wishing him or her optimism. Optimists are normally cheerful and happy, and therefore popular; they are resilient in adapting to failures and hardships, their chances of clinical depression are reduced, their immune system is stronger, they take better care of their health, they feel healthier than others and are in fact likely to live longer.” 
 
The real danger lies in the opposite: despair. Despair is an enticing drug. It’s that nagging voice that says, “not only is it not fair, but it will never get better.”
 
It’s a product of our news media highlighting the worst of our culture. It’s created by social media unceasingly telling us everyone is living a better life than us and that we are always losing. It comes from feeling you’ve lost power over the outcomes of your life.
 
Despair is 7 million able-bodied adult males who are currently unemployed and no longer looking for work.
 
Despair is half of Illinoisians saying they would “leave our state if they could,” which implies they can’t fix it and they can’t get out. We just learned another 104,000 did find their way out in 2022.
 
Despair is the mother who receives a job offer, only to find out she will lose money if she gets off public assistance.
 
My Catholic faith has taught me despair is a sin because it removes the possibility of redemption.
 
The great part of the American experiment is it has been built out of hundreds of years of hope.
 
If you came to America, if you sacrificed, if you worked hard, you could live a better life than your parents. Our parents and grandparents fought and died for that hope.
 
That history gives me hope for the future of our state and our nation.
 
And our path forward is going to take a lot of work. It will take a lot of courage, sacrifice and action.
 
And I can promise you we can build a better state and nation for our kids and our grandkids.
 
How do I know? Because I’m not optimistic. I’ve got something better: I have hope.
 
Happy New Year! May God bless you all and inspire your hope.
 
Matt

Years ago, we added a portion we call “thankfuls.”
 
During thankfuls, we each say something specific from that day for which we were grateful.
 
Some days it’s as simple as “seeing the smile on Rocky’s face as he went down the slide.”
 
My daughter’s most common refrain is “having a good time with” either Mom, Dad or Rocky.
 
Last night during prayers, my daughter said something unexpected.
 
She said, “I’m thankful for all the people daddy works with.”
 
I asked her what she meant by that. She said, “All the people that sacrifice their money and their time to help the poor people.”
 
Hmmm.
 
She wasn’t just talking about our team at work, although I must admit they are quite wonderful. She was thankful for all of you.
 
And she’s right.
 
Because it's your donation that protects the miracle of the free market and the American Dream.
 
It’s your sacrifices that help kids, such as Aaliyah Johnson, rise up from horrific circumstances to attend one of the most elite schools on Chicago’s South Side.
 
It’s your investment that lifts the homeless, such as Stephen Blake, out of the desperation of begging and into prosperity through the dignity of entrepreneurship and work.
 
We talk a lot about tax codes, pension systems and collective bargaining, but those are not what we are fighting for. They are important, but those are the means.
 
The ends are our friends and neighbors. They are the people who work with us. They are the people at our church. And they are the people we don’t yet know who are struggling.
 
It’s you who give them hope.
 
And for that, it’s not just Fiona who is grateful: it’s everyone who calls this state “home.”
 
This year, know you are in my family’s thoughts and prayers. And we are grateful for you.
 
God bless you, and I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.
 
Matt

Afterwords, I stayed around and talked with attendees. One of them was a young attorney. She said, “I really enjoyed your speech, but you should know, Edmund Burke never said that.”
 
To be honest, this comment didn’t surprise me. You hear all sorts of off-the-wall opinions in post-talk conversations.
 
Of course Edmund Burke said this. Her comment was the equivalent of saying that Martin Luther King Jr. never said, “I have a dream.”
 
But I wrote down her comment anyway.
 
A few weeks later, I reviewed my notes and I see my scribble that said “check Edmund Burke quote.”  
 
I opened my computer, typed in the quote and quickly found out she was right.
 
Edmund Burke never said that. In fact, nobody ever really did.
 
It appears it became strangely misquoted by President John F. Kennedy in a 1961 speech to Canadian lawmakers.
 
JFK just kind of wrote his own phrase.
 
Which makes sense, because I reread the quote, and realized that it made little sense. Or at best, provided no instruction.
 
To thwart evil, good men just need to do something. Anything?
 
Reason alone tells us this is insufficient.
 
And to make matters worse, I’d just lost one of my favorite closing lines. Nothing but huzzah-less crowds ahead for me.
 
But a few months later, I stumbled across a twist.
 
While reading Edmund Burke’s “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents,” I read a quote that drew me in. It did so in the same way the fake quote had.
 
Burke said: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
 
Ah-HA!
 
This is likely the quote JFK attempted to use.
 
And to me, this is far more interesting.
 
What Burke said is that we need to associate. To form a group. To come together when we want to solve problems.
 
Years later, Alexis de Tocqueville would credit the American success story to these groups, known as “mediating institutions.” They are churches, clubs, schools, fraternal groups and other associations.
 
“Americans use associations to give fêtes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools.”
 
Some Americans start associations, such as the Illinois Policy Institute.
 
A group of people who are concerned about the dangers and evils of socialism, in all of its forms. We are a group dedicated to empowering people and lifting up the poor and marginalized through the miracle of the free market. We relentlessly defend democracy, freedom and the American Dream.
 
That doesn’t mean we always win. As Burke said in “Reflections on the Revolution in France”: “Our patience will achieve more than our force” – which is definitely not easy.
 
It begs the question: What do we do when we are upset and frustrated, when it feels like bad ideas are taking over?
 
Do we do nothing?
 
Of course not. We associate.
 
And we make Edmund Burke proud. 
 
Matt
 
P.S. While researching this piece, I also found out Martin Luther King Jr. did not originally come up with the phrase, “I have a dream.” He heard it months earlier from a pastor at the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. After her sermon, King asked her permission to use the phrase. Thankfully, unlike JFK, he got the quote right.

A homemade birthday card Aunt Nan sent to my son earlier this year.

 
I love my Aunt Nan.
 
But here’s the thing: our political views couldn’t be more different.
 
Case in point: As I walked into her apartment on Saturday morning, MSNBC was blaring in both the living room and bedroom.
 
The screen read, “New Report Shows Federal Inmates Paid Less than Minimum Wage.”
 
I’m still not even sure how to address that.
 
I walked over to her bed. I held her hand as she struggled to breathe. I cried.
 
I am going to miss this woman.
 
Because despite our dramatically different political differences, we were still very close.

Aunt Nan holding Rocky, and discussing toy horses with Fiona.

And it’s because we shared something more important than politics: love.
 
….
 
Earlier this year, media outlets were relentlessly attacking U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife. Even his close friends were turning on him.
 
But the most unlikely person came to his defense: Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
 
She said, “I have probably disagreed with [Justice Thomas] more than any other justice. And yet, Justice Thomas is the one justice in the building that literally knows every employee’s name. Every one of them. Not only does he know their names, but he remembers their family names and history. He is the first one who will say, ‘Is your son, OK?’ ‘How’s your daughter doing in college?’ He was the first person that sent me flowers when my step-father died.
 
“He is a man that cares deeply about the court as an institution. About the people who work there. But about people.”
 
I watched this clip in shock because Justices Sotomayor and Thomas are oil and water: They don’t mix.
 
Or at least, that is what we are led to believe.
 
Because the truth about oil and water can be found in a similarly unlikely place: a mayonnaise jar.
 
Turn over the back of a mayonnaise bottle. The first ingredient is oil. The second is water.
 
What do we know about mayonnaise? It’s mixed up, and stays that way.
 
The reason is the third ingredient. It’s the emulsifier: an egg.
 
An egg binds two ingredients together that couldn’t seem more different.
 
For Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor, love is the emulsifier.
 
For Republicans and Democrats, for conservatives and progressives, love is the emulsifier.
 
For my Aunt Nan and I, love is the emulsifier.
 
This morning I got a phone call at 4:30 a.m. My Aunt Nan said her goodbyes. Then she died.
 
As I cried, I smiled from the memories and Aunt Nan’s primary lesson: Love is stronger than any difference in this world.

P.S. Last year, I was reading the YouTube comments from a speech I gave to 1,500 free-market leaders in Orlando. The first comment: “Amazing speech. We need more of this.”
 
The username: NanJean. My aunt.
 

Churchill wouldn’t have used the word “innovative.” He would have called it “corkscrew thinking.”
 
He developed that term because for most of World War II the outlook was dark for England. In every measure of military superiority, Germany had the advantage.
 
Germany initially had better planes. They had more soldiers, and those soldiers were better trained. They had more and better tanks, guns and U-boats.
 
He knew the war would not be won if England used traditional methods to face the Germans.
 
But Churchill realized he had an unfair advantage: He called it “corkscrew thinkers.”
 
Corkscrew thinkers are people who think differently: Individuals who see the world as it could be, not as it is. People who look at a problem and see an opportunity. 
 
Churchill created a special division to house his corkscrew thinkers, the “XX committee.”
 
The corkscrew thinkers created the Sten gun – a machine gun that was produced at one-fiftieth the cost of a normal gun and was produced by a bicycle manufacturer.
 
They deployed a “ghost army” of inflatable tanks and rubber airplanes. It confused the Germans about the intended attack point of D-Day.
 
They considered turning icebergs into mid-Atlantic airfields and dropping Hilter look-alikes in Greece to order German troops to surrender.
 
In other words, Churchill deployed innovative solutions to England’s problems.
 
The result was that Churchill was able to compete with a fraction of the resources.
 
Today, we use Churchill's “corkscrew thinkers” in Illinois.
 
If we are going to compete, we need to use our unfair advantages of creativity and innovation.
 
While unions are outspending us 6-1 in the Amendment 1 battle, we’ve got outsized impact by securing editorial opposition, including The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Daily Herald, News-Gazette and Crain’s Chicago Business. We directly target our campaign to persuade the people who will influence the election results the most, with sniper-like focus.
 
As public school reading and math scores are rapidly failing, we’re producing a documentary showing the failure of the Chicago Teachers Union – including securing the website ChicagoTeachersUnion.com – and helping thousands of people get freedom by opting out of their unions in record numbers.
 
For the past 20 years, less than half of Illinois residents had a candidate to vote for to represent them in Springfield because there was only one candidate running. So we recruited free-market candidates in 89% of the districts statewide – the highest number recorded. That work will increase voter turnout by over 200,000 votes.
 
We’ve hired a cartoonist, created econometric studies to determine the most effective lawmakers to partner with to pass bills and created Mike Madigan mascot heads (well, the merit of some ideas might be debatable).
 
But it’s these innovative ideas that give us an unfair advantage. 
 
That’s why I like to think if I ever had dinner with Winston Churchill, he’d say: “Illinois Policy Institute has corkscrew thinking for Illinois’ problems.”

Teaching my son, Rocky, the lost art of garbage can kicking

It reminds me of a story we discuss a lot in the Paprocki house. It goes like this:
 
There once was a village on the banks of a river. Everything in the village was peaceful and happy. The people there were good.
 
But one day, while down by the river, a young girl saw a baby floating in the water.
 
She dove into the rushing stream, swam out to the baby, brough him back to shore and saved the baby’s life.
 
The town celebrated this little hero.
 
The next day, villagers saw two babies floating down the river. They jumped in and saved both of the babies.
 
The following day there were four babies floating down the river. Then 10. Then 30. The number kept increasing.  
 
Pretty soon, the entire village started setting up 24-hour lookout posts. They had rescue teams. They brought up all these children as new members of the village.
 
The entire effort of the village was refocused to save these babies’ lives.
 
While they were able to save most of babies, they couldn’t save them all. There were too many.  
 
Then one day, while sitting on the banks of the river, one of the look-out crew left his post. He ran home.
 
His neighbors started shouting after him, hurling insults and saying, “Come back here!” and “Coward!” and “You only care about yourself!”
 
He never responded.
 
He ran all the way to his house. He said to his wife, “Pack your bags. We’re going up river. We are going to find that son-of-a-gun who is throwing all these babies in the river.”
 
This story illustrates how I feel as a conservative.
 
Do we care about the poor? Yes.
 
Do we care about the marginalized? Of course.
 
Do we care about the homeless? Absolutely.
 
But I want to go upriver and solve the underlying problems. I don’t want poverty to be “more tolerable.” I want to eradicate it.
 
That’s not to say we shouldn’t care about the symptoms- we should. But if we focus all of our attention on the symptoms and don’t fix the causes, we are spending all our time pulling babies from the river.
 
Villagers just saw the man running away. No one saw his conversation with his wife or understood his heart was in exactly the right place.
 
So how do they understand his intent or our intent to find a permanent solution?
 
Easy: We need to tell them.
 
We need to show people what we care about.
 
We need to lead by saying, “I believe everyone deserves dignity and respect and we need to fight for the dignity of the poor and marginalized. I believe the American Dream was founded on the principle that all people, through hard work, can achieve greatness. That’s why I support…”
 
Saying words like this is the difference between being misunderstood and reviled, or creating a movement that brings an entire group charging behind you.
 
But it’s not easy.
 
It’s easy to get lost in the symptoms. We all do it.
 
As my daughter pointed out to me, “Daddy, why don’t you just get rid of the rats instead of kicking the garbage can all the time.”
 
She’s right. It’s time to go upstream.

As a high school math teacher, Joseph Ocol called attendance every day.
 
And every day, he would call the name Kareem Mohamad Raji.
 
Kareem would reply in a smooth, deep voice: “I’m good, Mr. Ocol.”
 
On April 26, Kareem was leaving school for home. He got in his car, and was struck by a stray bullet. He died immediately.
 
The next day, Joseph Ocol stood in front of the class. He called attendance. He got to the name Kareem Mohamad Raji.
 
A lump formed in his throat. He knew he would never again call that name. He would never again hear the words, “I’m good, Mr. Ocol.”
 
Right then, Joseph Ocol decided his mission was not just to educate kids. He needed to save them. He needed to protect them during the most dangerous part of the day:  immediately after school.
 
So he started a chess club.
 
The first day of chess club, nobody came to chess club.
 
Then Joe bought snacks. Everybody came to chess club.
 
Slowly, something amazing happened. 
 
Year after year, Joe began taking kids from one of the poorest, most dangerous neighborhoods in Chicago. He taught them chess. They grew into city champions. Then state champions. Then national champions.
 
The program grew so successful that the Chicago Public Schools began funding his work to send his kids to tournaments.
 
That is, until Joe Ocol crossed the Chicago Teachers Union.
 
They were on strike. But he needed to be with his kids. Especially, because he knew just one day without after-school chess could end one of his students’ lives.
 
He crossed the picket line.
 
Joe was ostracized. Then the union pressured the school administrators and Joe’s chess club funding was taken away. The Chicago Teachers Union was fine with winning by sacrificing a few pawns.
 
But Joe countered their move.
 
He started paying for everything himself.
 
….
 
A decade later, Joseph Ocol was calling attendance for his 8th grade algebra class.
 
He called the name Aaliyah Johnson.
 
Aaliyah was a quiet girl. She was used to being overlooked. The majority of her life had been spent in foster care.
 
After the first day of school, Joe went to her desk and asked her to join his chess team. She said she couldn’t. She said she’d never played chess.
 
She said she wasn’t smart enough.
 
He leaned down and delivered her first chess lesson: “Aaliyah, the most important piece on a chess board is not the king, it’s not the queen and it’s not the rook. It’s the simple pawn. Because the pawn is the only piece that has the potential to transform into any other piece on the board. In you, I see a potential queen.”
 
She joined the team.
 
She picked up chess quickly. She started winning scrimmage games after school. The boys on the team were afraid to play her, and Joe knew he had another champion on his hands. He also knew that by playing in ranked tournaments she would have a better chance of attending a better high school and getting money for college.
 
But there was a problem. Joe had just been diagnosed with cancer. He didn’t have money to take his team, and Aaliyah, to those tournaments.
 
When Joe told us his story, we told it to our community at the Illinois Policy Institute. To you.
 
People throughout the state were inspired by his work. They admired his bravery for standing up for his kids against the Chicago Teachers Union. Because of you, we raised $10,000 for Joe’s chess team in 48 hours.
 
Last May, our donors again raised enough money to send Aaliyah and her classmates to the national junior chess championships in Grapevine, Texas.
 
While at the tournament, Joseph sent us this picture.

That is Aaliyah with Joseph. The medals around her neck are because she finished second place in nationals.
 
And that chess win led Aaliyah to be recruited to a selective enrollment high school in Chicago.
 
When I asked Joe why chess is so important, he said for these kids, “It’s not about winning games. It’s about saving lives. The people who help support our chess program are saving the lives of these kids that nobody believes in.”
 
Kareem. Or Aaliyah.
 
You help make the difference. You help Joe take the pawns on his chess team, and teach them they have the power to change into anything they want to be. They can become a rook, a knight, a bishop, a king or a queen.
 
On behalf of Joe and Aaliyah: thank you!

 The problem is, my dad died when I was a teenager. Those moments never came.
 
But I still imagine sitting next to him. He puts his arm around my shoulders, turns to me and says, “Fight the good fight. Finish the course. Keep the faith.”
 
I’ve thought of these words every time I’ve been in a struggle and questioned what I needed to be doing.
 
These words have always given me strength and purpose.
 
But even though I envision these words coming from my dad, they actually came from St. Paul.
 
More specifically, 2 Timothy 4:7
 
Paul is an old man, and he is giving advice to a young Timothy.
 
Paul tells Timothy, “For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.”
 
To me, this does not sound like a description of a society from 2,000 years ago. It sounds like this moment in time, here in America.
 
The free market and capitalism – the miracles that have lifted billions of people out of poverty – are attacked and demonized.
 
Socialism’s trotted out again and again as the mythical antidote to all societal ills, while proponents casually ignore how that system has forced generations into dependence, destitution and starvation.
 
So what do we do?
 
This is where St. Paul puts his arm across our shoulders and says, “Fight the good fight. Finish the course. Keep the faith.”
 
This is the challenge we all face today, to fight for the values and principles that forged the greatest nation in the history of the world.
 
To not succumb to the myths from naysayers and critics who claim the American Dream is dead. To finish the course, and to continue to strive for the fulfillment of the American ideal of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
 
None of this is easy. It’s why St. Paul needs to deliver a pep talk.
 
But the payoff is we create a better world for our children and our grandchildren. They will know we sacrificed, we suffered – not for ourselves, but for them.
 
The same as our grandparents and our parents did for us.
 
One day, my children, Fiona and Rocky, will come to me for advice. When they do, I’ll tell them, “Fight the good fight. Finish the course. Keep the faith.”
 
And I have faith they, too, will be fortified by these words and answer the challenge.

Half the country has now been irrevocably affected by the ongoing war. 

In addition to having a family member killed by the Russians, there are plenty of good reasons for Ukrainians to dislike Russians. Displacement, constant bombings, economic devastation. 

So not surprisingly, they don’t like each other. 

The poll shows 76% of Ukrainians have an unfavorable opinion about Russians. 

That seems about right. 

But what shocked me is how those numbers compare to politics in the United States. 

When Democrats were asked their opinion of Republicans, nearly 87% had an unfavorable opinion of Republicans. 

To put that another way, if someone was attacking your country, killed someone you knew and you had to move, your opinion of them would be more favorable by 11 percentage points than if once every two years they chose to vote differently than you. 

It gets worse: a majority of respondents said Republicans were “closed minded,” “dishonest” and “immoral.”

That is a toxic cocktail for ever finding mutual ground. 

Imagine getting a recommendation to buy a car from someone who is “corrupt and a liar.”  The value and the condition of the car become completely inconsequential. 

It turns out, Republicans have the same unfavorable opinion of Democrats (86% unfavorable). The only difference is instead of “closed minded,” Republicans view Democrats as “lazy” and “unintelligent.”

The reasons for these strong unfavorables were shown in a study conducted by a Boston College neuroscientist. 

The study took two groups in conflict: Palestinians and Israelis; and Republicans and Democrats. It found in both cases, each side felt their own group was motivated by love. When asked what motivated their rival group in conflict, they said “hate.”

They call this concept “motivation attribution asymmetry.” 

It exists far beyond war and politics. It is why we hate our rival sports teams and Chicagoans believe the Green Bay Packers’ are dirty players and the St. Louis Cardinals are cheaters. Meanwhile, our team is the only team that “does it right.” 

And the problems with “motivation attribution asymmetry” are: first, it is a logical fallacy because both sides cannot be correct that their team is motivated by love and the other is motivated by hate; second, and worse, it stops all negotiations. 

If you believe someone’s internal driver is hate and evil, it’s probably not someone you want to sit across the table from. 

It is why you never invite someone you hate over for tea. 

But that is exactly what we need to be doing. 

As free market advocates, we need to be having conversations with people who disagree with us – often in places where we aren’t welcome. 

It’s one of the reasons why my favorite place to publish op-eds is the Washington Post. The majority of WaPo readers are liberal and progressive. A lot of their readers don’t agree with me. 

One commenter, Jims2727, said, “You’ve been had, Washington Post. Matt Paprocki is President of the Illinois Policy Institute […] and Paprocki is just one of their shills.”

But the Post has over 65 million readers. While they all won’t agree with me, and a lot don’t want me there, they all read my argument. 

Our goal is not to preach to the choir. It’s to create converts. To make the argument about how the free market lifts up the poor and marginalized, and show them the reason we want limited government is because we love our neighbor.

But to get them to understand our true motives, we need to invite them for tea.

Matt

P.S. My 5-year-old daughter, Fiona, just finished her summer reading list. When I took this picture, she said, “Daddy, can you send this to your friends that you are working to fix Illinois with?”

In a moment of weakness and pride, I answered ‘yes’. 

Here is my wonderful little girl, Fiona Rose, in front of the list of 75 books she read this summer:

My son Peter, aka ‘Rocky,’ outwardly smiling, but inwardly his rage against those pickleballers is intense.

Moms swap stories of trips, kids’ schools and parent frustrations.
 
All this while swarms of kids run around the park, laughing and playing.
 
It’s a Norman Rockwell painting.
 
Meanwhile, our home is walking distance to a world-class zoo, the beaches of Lake Michigan and I run the three miles into my office every day.
 
This is not a suburban utopia. I live in the city of Chicago.
 
But you never hear about this side of Chicago. Instead, discussions of crime and safety get sensationalized.
 
That’s not to say crime isn’t happening. It is. When you have a population of nearly 3 million people, there will be crime.
 
But there is not much crime where I live. In fact, when I asked my neighbors if they lock their doors at night, most answer, “Not regularly.”
 
This is weird, or at least I thought it was weird.
 
It turns out that Alexis De Tocqueville saw a similar trend nearly 200 years ago.
 
He saw in America that communities thrived when they had strong “mediating institutions.” Those are groups of people who come together to fix problems and act outside of government and private industry:
 
“Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small;
 
“Americans use associations to give fêtes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools. Finally, if it is a question of bringing to light a truth or developing a sentiment with the support of a great example, they associate.”
 
This is what is happening at our neighborhood park. The community is coming together and addressing solutions to problems.
 
And it’s become so successful that pickleball noise is our top concern.
 
It sounds ridiculous, but if you can’t play pickleball without the neighborhood coming down on you, what would happen if there were a drug deal, or a robbery?
 
It’s made me realize, maybe this is what we are missing in a lot of Illinois today.
 
Church attendance has dwindled. Civic organizations, such as the Elks, the Moose and the Optimists, are seeing decreasing membership. And as Robert Putnam has pointed out, even bowling leagues are becoming extinct.
 
For the American experiment to thrive, we need more mediating institutions: more little league teams, more inner-city scout troops and as much as I hate to say it, even more pickleball.
 
These institutions bind us together as a people. And when they do, more people can leave their doors unlocked – even in “dangerous” places such as Chicago.

 A family buys a new puppy. It’s an adorable little Labrador retriever. One day, the small puppy runs out of the house, into the street, gets run over and dies. The father picks up the dog, says he heard dog tastes delicious, and the family decides to eat their dog. Nobody saw them do it.
 
Did they do anything morally wrong?
 
If you are like most well-educated and non-psychopathic people, you had an initial feeling of disgust. And you probably have a nuanced answer that although it may not be morally wrong, it’s disgusting and that family is a bunch of monsters – and you would be right for thinking that.
 
No amount of logical argument about the taste of dog (barf!), about other cultures eating their dogs, or about not wasting potential food would ever change your mind, right?
 
Of course not! Eating Lucy will always be disgusting and wrong.
 
And this is similar to debates we are having in public policy today. Once our brains decide something is immoral or unfair, almost no amount of logic will change our minds.
 
So why, when we argue for the free market, do we rely strictly on logic?
 
We know the free market has lifted more people out of poverty than anything else in human history.
 
In fact, in your and my lifetime, more people have grown out of poverty worldwide than ever before in human history. Mountains of research and evidence points to the free market as the reason.
 
You know what the research never points to? Socialism.
 
Yet in America today, it feels like there is a growing rise of young people rallying around “Democratic Socialism.” Their enemy is capitalism and the free market.
 
There is an endless supply of sad stories of sick kids and abandoned elderly the socialists can prop up to make the moral case for wealth redistribution.
 
The result: we are playing defense, even though we are right.
 
So what do we do about it?
 
As in the case of the family dog, we need to reclaim the moral high ground.
 
Instead of discussing the debates of Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes (which I’m guilty of) and instead of drawing macroeconomic charts (which doesn’t work that well with family members – who knew?), we need to focus our efforts on the moral case and WHO we are fighting for.
 
We need to lead with our hearts.
 
For example: In America, if you work hard and play by the rules, I believe you should be able to lift yourself out of poverty.
 
Even someone who has reached the depths of despair, such as Steven Blake.
 
Steven served our country in the U.S. Army.  But for the past decade of his adult life, Steven has been homeless twice. He lived on the streets of Chicago. He endured minus-20 degree temperatures without shelter. He stood in line at a soup kitchen to survive.
 
Despite government programs with good intentions, nothing changed.
 
The problem with socialism is it just pulls all people down to poverty for longer. What we want is to lift people up, to allow them to find dignity through work and achieve earned success.
 
Steven says one day there was a man selling fruit. “He invited me to join him and showed me how it all works. I [realized] I was capable of running my own business, so I took all I learned and started my own fruit stand.”
 
Steven is no longer homeless. His fruit stand is expanding and he’s looking to hire people to work for him. Every Monday morning he delivers the best fresh fruit in Chicago to the Illinois Policy Institute office.
 
I asked him what pulled him out of poverty. His answer: “A job.”
 
All of a sudden, instead of socialists saying we are fighting on behalf of Wall Street billionaires, we show them whose side we are really on: the poor, the marginalized, people such as Steven Blake.
 
And if we are being honest with ourselves, all of us in America come from ancestors who were in poverty. Every one of us is only a few generations removed. There is a reason our families immigrated to America: because they were poor. They lacked opportunity. But because of jobs and the free market, we have escaped the misery of poverty. 
 
If we want to change the direction of our state and our country, we need to change how we speak. We need to speak what is in our hearts. We need to make the moral argument for the free market, not the logical one.
 
Because if we don’t, we will sound like we are making the logical argument for why it’s OK to eat our dog.

As I ran into work on Thursday morning, a middle-aged man was sitting in the middle of the sidewalk. I slowed down. In a strained voice, he said, “Please help.”
 
Since I’ve moved to Chicago, I’ve always struggled with how to engage with homeless people. 
 
Sometimes I would give them money. Sometimes I wouldn’t. 
 
And then years ago, I read a study that said, “If you give a homeless person money, they will buy drugs or alcohol with it.”
 
So armed with a new justification, I did what everyone else does: I ignored them and walked on by when they asked for help. 
 
The worst part about it is, I’ve been in their position. While not homeless or addicted, I did beg for train fare to go home to see my dying mother. 
 
I still couldn’t see what I should do in these daily interactions, until one day my family came to visit me for lunch at the office.
 
As we were walking down the street, we walked by a homeless person. As much as I hate to admit this, I didn’t even notice him. 
 
I’m holding hands with my daughter and she stopped walking and said, “Daddy, why didn’t you help him?”
 
All at once, I realized what I was doing: I was the priest in the story of the Good Samaritan.
 
I did the exact same thing as the Levite. My brother was on the street asking for help, and I did nothing. 
 
I couldn’t lean down and say, “Fiona, we would help him, but based on a research paper, he is going to buy drugs.” 
 
So I did what any over-reacting father would do: I opened my wallet, took out $20 and said, “Here. Let’s give this to him.” 
 
We turned around and gave him the money. 
 
As we walked away, I’ll be honest: I felt pretty good about myself. And for good reason. Matthew 5:42 says, “Give to those who ask you.” There was no caveat that said, “Unless you think it will be spent on something you wouldn’t approve of.”
 
In the next block we saw another homeless person. Fiona looked up at me. I realized that at this pace, I was about to go broke if we walked three more blocks. 
 
So when Neli Vazquez Rowland, the founder of A Safe Haven, an organization that helps thousands of homeless people every day, came on the Stay and Fight podcast this week, I asked her, “What should I do when I walk by a homeless person.” 
 
Without hesitation, Neli handed me a stack of business cards. The cards give the address and phone number for A Safe Haven. More importantly, A Safe Haven doesn’t just provide housing and drug treatment programs, it provides jobs and dignity. 
 
The result is that A Safe Haven has a 200% higher success rate than normal drug treatment facilities. 
 
So today, as I ran into work, I slowed down when someone asked for help. I asked his name. He said, “Craig.” I said, “Craig, I have someone who can help.” I handed him a business card for A Safe Haven, paperclipped with $2 for bus fare. 
 
With tears in his eyes, Craig said, “God bless you.” 
 
Not such a struggle anymore. 
 
Matt

P.S. The Illinois Policy Institute does a lot of grassroots work – door knocking, phone calls, spreading the gospel of free markets. Going forward, we will be partnering with A Safe Haven to use their temp agency to employ formerly homeless people to evangelize the miracle of the free market in communities we have never been able to reach before. And I can’t think of better ambassadors than people’s lives who have been changed because of work. 

Lonely, depressed and frustrated, I was unable to get out, even though the change would have required little work and could have dramatically improved my life.
 
Here was the situation: nearly every day of my life, I had prioritized a small-glowing rectangle that fit in my pocket over nearly everything else in my life – my friends, my family, God. My dysfunctional relationship was with my iPhone.
 
Decades ago, I purchased a phone that promised to improve my life. Its advertisements showed a magical combination of freedom and connection with others.
 
And every new feature seemed to fulfill that promise. GPS on my phone meant I would never get lost again.
 
Twitter, Facebook and Instagram put me in contact with friends I had not seen since high school – never for a second questioning why none of us had reached out for decades.
 
Email access meant anyone could reach me at any time.
 
The result was: I loved my phone.
 
I mean that in the truest sense of the word. It was the first thing I would look at when I woke up in the morning. Checking my email was the last thing I did before going to bed.
 
One day as I ran to work, I realized I left my iPhone at home. I was already three miles away from home, on the steps of my office, but my anxiety and racing heart were too much for me. The fear of being without my phone for a day sent me into a panic that resulted in my running right back home.
 
The worst moment came when my then 3-year-old daughter, Fiona, was standing on the floor with a stuffed animal in her arms. She grabbed my knee, saying, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.” But I was too busy reading an email: “One second, Fiona.” She persisted, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.” Frustrated, I yelled, “WHAT FIONA? DAD’S BUSY! WHAT DO YOU WANT?”
 
She started to cry.
 
With tears in her eyes and stifled breath, she said, “Daddy… I… just… wanted… you… to… play… with… meeeee.”
 
Crack.
 
That was the moment I realized I was addicted to something I loved, but that didn’t love me back. It was hurting those I do love.
 
Every day I was spending over 2.5 hours on my phone.
 
How much time was I playing with my kids, or talking to my wife, or meeting with friends? How much time was I praying?
 
I can promise you, not even close to 2.5 hours per day.
 
Even when you know you have a problem, it’s hard to get help. Friends would tell me, “Just remove some apps, and spend less time on your phone.” That was like telling the alcoholic to “drink less.”
 
After trying everything, eight weeks ago I got rid of my iPhone.
 
I traded it for a “dumb phone” called the LightPhone.
 
My new phone has three main features: phone calls, text messages and a calculator.
 
It is the worst phone I’ve used in decades. I hate it. It’s a terrible phone.
 
And every day is hard.
 
I’m back to printing off directions from MapQuest. Texting is so difficult, I usually end up calling the person. When I want to check my email, I pull out my laptop.
 
But here is what I’ve learned: I shouldn’t love things, I should use them.
 
The result is I have recovered 2.5 hours every day to spend with the people I love.
 
The last thing I do before I go to bed now is kiss my beautiful wife.
 
If I leave my phone at home, I couldn’t be less concerned.
 
And Fiona and Rocky are never tugging on my leg, because I’m usually on the floor with them wrestling, reading books and playing dolls.
 
Do I miss my iPhone? Of course. It was way easier to use.
 
But I’ve again put my job, my friends, my family and God way ahead of any device.
 
My memo to myself: My memo to myself: Use things; love people; worship God.
 
Matt

 “Be careful,” was the advice I kept hearing. 
 
I thought this was a warning to wear my helmet on the ride. 
 
It turns out, Chicago Hope Academy is in East Garfield Park, which has been nicknamed the “murder capital of Chicago.”
 
For good reason. Violent crime in East Garfield Park is 805% greater than the national average. 
 
When people think of crime and Chicago, this neighborhood is what they fear. 
 
But the second you walk into Hope Academy, it doesn’t feel like you’re in a dangerous neighborhood. You feel like you are in a suburban Christian school. 
 
Walk through the front door and Bible verses fill the hallways.
 
Pennants for Notre Dame, Harvard and Columbia are lined up above the lockers. Those are the universities Hope Academy’s alumni have attended.
 
But outside its doors, everything changes. 
 
Just down the street is Manley High School. Manley is a fortress. It has a capacity of 3,000 students, but only 81 attended there in 2021. Of those, only 21 will ever graduate. 
 
Chicago Hope Academy’s graduation rate is 100%. Of those graduates, 80% go to college. 
 
Same kids. Same neighborhood. Very different outcome. 
 
The reason isn’t per-student funding: Hope Academy is significantly cheaper.
 
It isn’t the teacher-to-student ratio: Manley is close to one teacher per student.
 
It isn’t that the students are cherry-picked: Both schools serve the same area.
 
The difference is community. 
 
At Chicago Hope, there are no metal detectors. In fact, none of the lockers have locks on them.
 
“Stealing is not something we are concerned about here,” said Scout Muzikowski, the admissions director. “We are all in this together. So, people don’t steal.”
 
Inside of their school gymnasium, I walked by Boston Celtics power forward Jabari Parker. 
 
At the adjacent court, there were neighborhood kids practicing free throws. 
 
This is not what I expected to see. An NBA player working on his jump shot, next to families that have never had access to safe, indoor basketball courts. 
 
Community is more than just people living next to other people. It involves sharing life, being invested in the outcomes of your neighbors. 
 
The results are amazing. The neighborhood of East Garfield Park is transforming. 
 
Kids are being bussed in from Chicago suburbs, paying $10,000 a kid, to learn soccer skills on Chicago Hope’s field. Hope’s only stipulation: you can use our field, but you have to let kids from our neighborhood come to the camp for free. 
 
It’s a win-win. 
 
As I left Chicago Hope Academy, I walked past Chicago Blackhawks all-star Patrick Kane. I started laughing as I thought about everyone telling me to “be careful.” 
 
I went outside and put my helmet back on. I felt completely safe. 

Six years ago as I walked into our small Chicago apartment, I noticed something strange when I came home from work. 
 
The bedroom door was closed. It was just my wife and I who lived there, so the door was always open.
 
I touched the handle, and I heard a noise: it was crying. Without opening the door, I knew exactly what was wrong. 
 
I walked through the door and saw Anna crying on the bed. Another pregnancy test was on the end table. It had a single, isolated control line: not the hoped-for double line. 
 
After several years of marriage, we had become very familiar with the control line. 
 
The struggle with infertility is a lonely, frustrating and often humiliating journey. 
 
At Mother’s Day Mass, I remember the priest asking all the mothers to stand up, so the congregation could clap in appreciation. I didn’t clap. I was holding my wife’s hand with all my strength. 
 
At dinners with well-intentioned friends, someone usually says, “You both would make great parents. When are you going to start having kids?”
 
It felt like a gut punch. Every time.
 
I would look across the table and see pain creep into my wife’s eyes. With poise and grace, she would always respond, “We will see.” 
 
Infertility is not unique to us. In fact, you know someone who struggles with infertility. They are in your family. They work in your office. They are your neighbors. Or it’s you. I know this because infertility affects one out of every five couples in the United States. 
 
It’s personal. It’s embarrassing. As a result, it’s a silent pain two people quietly carry with them. 
 
After years of seeing the control line, Anna and I discussed our options. The one we discussed time and time again was adoption.  
 
We saw adoption as an opportunity to have a large family, or what I call a full kitchen table. 
 
At the time, we didn’t know what we were getting into. The truth about adoption is it changes you. You realize truths about yourself, and other people. 
 
For me, it exposed my insecurities. From others, I gained a new sense of admiration. 
 
What do I do when my child says, “You’re not my real father”? Will my child always fear being abandoned? These thoughts would keep me awake. 
 
The moment of truth came on July 17, 2021. Anna and I walked into the NICU at Slidell Memorial Hospital and saw Peter. When he was born, he wasn’t breathing and needed oxygen to keep him alive. We scrubbed our hands, walked over to his tiny crib and Anna picked him up. My heart was racing. 
 
Little Peter opened his big eyes, looked at Anna, nuzzled his head into her arms and closed his eyes again. He was happy. He was ours. 
 
Peter will never have my hands. He will never have Anna’s eyes. But we share something deeper: a bond that will keep us together for eternity. 
 
On the other hand, I have seen the selfless pain of a birth mother. I have heard a birth mother cry as she signed adoption paperwork: a heart-rentching sob. A cry that comes not just from your heart, but from your soul. 
 
A mother giving a child up for adoption is only comparable to a person taking a bullet for a stranger. For the rest of my life, I will admire and remain in awe of Peter’s birth mother. 
 
She will always remain my vision of a true hero
 
All of this gives me hope for the future. Today we stand at the brink of a massive change in American history. Roe v. Wade is likely within days of being overturned. That change gives people all along the political spectrum anxiety and fear. 
 
But adoption gives us another option, an option that I have lived through. I have seen its beauty. I’ve also seen its pain. It is not easy, but nothing that really matters in life ever is. 
 
Earlier today, I came home from work. When I walked upstairs, I noticed the bedroom door was closed. I walked up to the door, and before I opened it, I heard crying. 
 
As I opened the door, the crying stopped. My son looked up at me with his big eyes and said, “Dada.” 

Fifty-eight years ago, Lyndon B. Johnson took a helicopter to the small, rundown Kentucky town of Inez in the heart of coal country. 
 
The landing field reserved for the president was an abandoned miniature golf course. 
 
Johnson brought reporters from Time and Life magazines along on the trip, because he had big plans, and he wanted the media to cover an announcement: A declaration of war on poverty. 
 
When the president disembarked from the helicopter, he walked with the press corps to a dilapidated tar-paper house with a tin roof and fake brick siding. 
 
A man named Tom Fletcher lived there. 
 
Johnson led the reporters to Fletcher’s shack, leaned down and said, “Tell me your story.”
 
Fletcher was an unemployed sawmill operator. He had a first-grade education and was unable to read or write. He lived in a home without plumbing with his wife and his eight kids. 
 
Johnson stopped at Fletcher’s house because he thought Fletcher embodied American poverty. In Inez and the surrounding area, the poverty rate was over 60%. A third of the population faced chronic unemployment.
 
It was with this backdrop that Johnson walked off the porch and said: “Today I’m declaring war on poverty, and the goal is total victory.” 
 
It was a historic moment, because regardless of our political opinions, we all want to fight for Tom Fletcher. We all want to eliminate poverty.
 
Nearly 60 years later, what is the legacy of Johnson’s war on poverty?
 
By at least one very important metric, the War on Poverty has been an utter failure: It has discouraged people from pursuing meaningful work.
 
“Nonwork is the surest route to poverty,” according to researchers from the Brookings Institute, as written in a recent report titled, “The War on Poverty, What Went Wrong?”
 
This is important, because the basis of LBJ’s government programs was supporting people who did not work. The war on work created welfare programs, providing financial incentives to be unemployed. 
 
The Brookings study notes that “unless young people get more education, work more […] government spending will be minimally effective in fighting poverty.” 
 
Exactly. The problem with Johnson’s War on Poverty was that LBJ actually created a war on work. We need to call a cease fire and re-examine what will truly lift people up out of poverty. 
 
Fifty-eight years after the president walked off Tom Fletcher’s porch, our fight is the same. We need to continue to fight against poverty.
 
But what Tom Fletcher taught us is that government programs will never solve poverty. Only education and access to jobs can do that.  
 
And that’s a fight we can win. 

I asked how he came up with it. “I thought of it in the shower,” he said. “That’s where my best ideas come from.”

We both laughed, but there was wisdom in his quip. A shower creates clarity, often leading to new ideas.

It does so for many besides John Tillman.

Nearly three of every four Americans said their best ideas form while showering. The reason? Creativity surges when we are relaxed and tired. Our brain is free to process information.

For most people, the shower is the only time they are not consuming information. Outside of the shower, the TV is on, we are scrolling on our phone, we are listening to music or having a conversation with family or friends.

The shower has become our default thoughtful spot. It is where we can process the barrage of information we take in every day.

So what interested me is, “Can we replicate the same creativity that happens in the shower in other areas of our life?”

Yes. We do it every day when we walk.

I found some the greatest thinkers were obsessive walkers: William Wordsworth, Jonathan Swift, Beethoven, Friedrich Nietzsche and Charles Darwin.

It’s reported that Wordsworth walked over 180,000 miles in his life.

Darwin’s biographer noted his walking habit:

“As a businesslike man, he would pile up a mound of flints at the turn of the path and knock one away every time he passed to ensure he made a predetermined number of circuits without having to interrupt his train of thought. Five turns around the path amounted to half a mile or so. [This is] where he pondered. In this soothing routine, a sense of place became preeminent in Darwin’s science. It shaped his identity as a thinker.”

Darwin’s theory of natural selection likely came from a walk, not from an office.

And modern science confirms the benefits. A recent study from the University of Stanford showed creativity increased 60% after a walk.  

So if we want to have more “ah-ha!” moments, more creativity, more clarity, we would be wise to take some time out of the office. Go for a walk.

And afterwards, take a shower.

And she did her work with quiet dignity and humility. She rode the same “L” train as we do today. She walked our streets. She started our hospitals. She gave hope to people who had nowhere else to turn.

Seventy-five years after her canonization, I wonder if Mother Cabrini could have done the good works that put her on the path to sainthood if she were living today. Or would government bureaucracy and red tape prevent her from starting dozens of hospitals, schools, and orphanages? 

Last year, I started working with Fr. Sirico (another future saint) to create the St. John Neumann Institute, an organization to help foster strong institutions: churches, schools, and communities. As we went to file our non-profit paperwork with the government, our attorney told us that the current wait time is over a year.

Cabrini started two new institutions every year. Today, we have no chance to keep pace with America’s first saint. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. 

The path is clear, from De Tocqueville to Cabrini, our identity as Americans lies in our institutions and our ingenuity. We need to conserve, protect, and expand them. 

At age 67, Cabrini died in her bed at Columbus Hospital on Chicago’s north side. The room is still preserved today, on the first floor of a high-rise on 2520 N. Lakeview Ave. 

Ben pointed to the far end of his property: “Do you see that water over there?” I looked across his beautiful English garden to where it stepped down into a swamp. He continued, “In the Revolutionary War, Nathanael Greene placed his troops at the edge of the water. Americans were attacked RIGHT HERE at the Battle of Hobkirk’s Hill.”
 
Early on the morning of April 25, 1781, British forces attacked a sleeping and unprepared American army. 
 
Maj. Gen. Greene quickly ordered his men to fall in line. But the size of the British army proved too much. After hours of fighting, Greene narrowly escaped with his army.
 
The result was the death of 270 American troops, handing the British another victory. 
 
Greene was George Washington’s most trusted general: “A Gentleman in whom I place the most entire confidence,” Washington said.
 
Yet, in the southern theater of the Revolutionary War, Greene lost battle after battle. 

• At Guilford Courthouse, Gen. Cornwallis killed 1,300 of Greene’s men. 

• At Eutaw Springs, another 500 Americans died. 

• And where we stood, at Hobkirk’s Hill, the British handed Greene another defeat. 

I asked my host, “How is Nathanael Greene considered one of the greatest leaders in American history when he lost so much? It sounds like we have it all wrong.”
 
Ben got a serious look on his face. He said, “Yes. Greene lost a lot of battles. But that’s not the measure of a great general. Greene’s losses dealt significant blows to the British troops. He cut off supply chains. He extracted a high cost in every fight. And most importantly, he survived and continued to fight. Ultimately, it was Greene’s military strategy that pushed Cornwallis into Yorktown.”
 
How often are we concerned about the optics of winning every battle, instead of a diligent focus on winning the war?
 
Sometimes it’s more important to survive and advance than focus all your effort on short-term wins. This is a cutting-edge mathematical concept called ergodicity. 
 
Ergodicity covers the importance of individual wins based on duration.  
 
The 2011 Chicago Bulls are an example. 
 
The Bulls were the best team in basketball that year. Led by their MVP phenom, Derrick Rose, the Bulls won 75% of their games. 
 
In the first game of the playoffs, with the Bulls up 12 points with one minute left, Derrick Rose tore his ACL. The Bulls went on to win the game. 
 
But a week later, the best team in basketball was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. 
 
The lesson was clear: duration changes the impact of individual games. What’s best to win a game is not what’s best to win the playoffs. 
 
The team that won the NBA championship that year stayed healthy. They survived. 
 
Does that mean we shouldn’t focus on short-term wins? Of course not. But very few victories in life result from a single, isolated win. They result from ergodicity. 
 
Maj Gen. Greene was a master of ergodicity. He survived. He maintained a long-term strategy. The result? Cornwallis was maneuvered to Yorktown, where he was trapped and America won its independence.  
 
What are we focused on right now? Is it the battle? Or is it the war?