Ralph Waldo Emerson is said to have observed, “I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” As we do each year at The Strategy Bridge, we pause to reflect on our #Reviewing series, the books and movies and other work we’ve consumed as a community—the intellectual meal we’ve shared—and consider what they have helped us to make of ourselves, what they’ve helped us become.
Has the intellectual feast of the past year made us more aware of the interaction between changing technologies in war and the psychology of those who fight in war? Has it opened us to a better understanding of why humans fight these things we call wars, a clearer idea of the enduring nature and changing character of what it means to win in war, a sobering reflection on what fighting and not winning wars can do to a military? Has it opened a window through which we can view our own history and the history of others, making us more thoughtful in our approach to war, strategy, and each other? Has it given us a less prosaic language to express who we were, who we are, and who we will become? Perhaps our intellectual feast of the past year has done all this and more.
Looking forward to the coming year, we confront the beautiful reality that who we were and who we are perhaps matter less than who we will be. What matters is not what has been made but what we will make, not having become but becoming. And just as the books we have read made us, so the books we will read will transform us.
We look forward to working with all of you in making ourselves and each other—our Strategy Bridge community—stronger and broader and better in the coming year.
#TheBridgeReads
