"He who lives without discipline dies without honor." - Icelandic Proverb
When I came across this quote, I was reminded of the movie "The Dirty Dozen" (1967 - starring Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine and Charles Bronson, among other notables). It was about 12 men who were undisciplined soldiers in WW2 and all were sentenced to die for various actions, but through the work of Marvin (their Commanding Officer for a Commando Raid on a Nazi Palatial Estate during a party in which several Nazi top brass were in attendance), they were redeemed and restored to full military duty (only about 4 of the 12 made it out of the raid alive, but they became heroes and the 8 were buried with full military honors).
To die without honor; to die without courage - courage to stand up and right what is wrong, is to live a wasted life. That, to me, is the definition of discipline: "the courage to right what is wrong and to live your life accordingly every waking day." There are many people in this world today that fit this bill, and we mourn those honorable souls who passed before us. A few of their names are in the history books, but most of the names are people we have never heard of, for history does not record those common, everyday people that die with honor for a cause they believed in, and the wrongs that they continued to "right" throughout their lives.
My father and grandfather were both instrumental in my upbringing, for they brought discipline into my life and instilled that concept in my soul. However, my brother James Rae Cook (1949-1975) probably taught me more about Honor than the other two put together. Even though he lived a short life (25 years), he braved the elements with medical issues in the 1960's and earned his Eagle Scout Rank on 2/7/1965 and God and Country Award in 1967 (when it was a full-year program), and through his battle with leukemia (the illness that took his life on 4/24/75), he had the discipline and courage to not only keep a positive outlook on life, but to constantly visit the Children's Cancer wing at the University of Iowa Medical Center (when he was a patient with leukemia) and bring joy into the lives of young children that would never live to see the age of 10. That was his calling, for he loved people, and he loved children. Sadly, he left a wife and a 3-year old daughter, and life for those two has never been the same again. But, the legacy of my brother lives in the teachings I try to instill in my sons, for the Cook name needs to continue to represent Honor and Discipline. I pray that I continue to have the courage to live my life in such as manner.
Dedicated to my brother James Rae Cook; November 12, 1949 - April 24, 1975: Eagle Scout extrordinaire.
Think about it . . .
Yogi: 9/27/2010 1:04PM CDT
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