Dear Henry,
By the time you read this, you will know that among all the various mottos and maxims that define how the Hess family approaches life, there is one which stands out as being both the most important, and the simplest; Imua. It’s a Hawaiian word that your Kapuna adopted during his time at Kamehameha. It means simply “Go forward.” You may hear it as “Go forward with strength” or “go forward to your goal,” but it all encompasses the idea that, no matter what, you must always look forward. With this letter, then, I want to give you some of my reflections on this word, its meaning, and why the idea of Imua will be so important to you as you go forward in your own life.
Looking Back
However, before I discuss the idea of always moving forward, we must first look back. So many people live in their past. Traumas, mistakes, and betrayals can all have deleterious consequences to one’s life. My hope as your father is that I can protect you from the worst of that darkness, but there is no parent who is capable of protecting his or her child from all of it. So you will be marked by malevolence at some point in your life, and you will most certainly make mistakes. One aspect of Imua is to move on from them. To leave them in the past, and do not let those things have a negative effect on your life as you grow.
That is not to say, that you should completely forget the bad things that happen in the past. That too is unhealthy. Instead, you must always try to learn from those moments and adapt your reactions to future forms of evil, based on the lessons you learn from the past. To forget the past is foolish, but to allow the past to affect how you feel about the present and how you approach the future, is equally destructive. You must learn from the past. Better still, you should learn from others’ pasts, and avoid their mistakes.
The Book “Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife” by John Nagl is a tangible, historical example of the idea of learning (or failing to learn) from other’s mistakes. Nagl posits that the US Army in Vietnam could have and should have learned from the struggles of the British Army in Malaya. Instead, they failed to learn, and the result was one of the most disastrous military ventures in US history. Moreover, one of the main reasons they were unable to learn was because they were fixated on the previous war, which was of a far different nature. “The United States Army resisted any true attempt to learn how to fight an insurgency during the course of the Vietnam war preferring to treat it as a conventional conflict in the tradition of the Korean War and World War II.”[i]Not only did the US fail to learn from the preceding British operations in Malaya, but they were also fixated on the previous war they had fought, and the tactics and strategies that had worked then. Unfortunately, fixating on the past and failing to move forward is one of the most deleterious mistakes an organization or an individual can make.
Don’t Fight the Last War
In his book “The 33 Strategies of War,” author Robert Greene lists as the second strategy “Do not fight the Last War.” Though the book and the preponderance of his examples focus on military operations, this strategy is scalable from the universal to the individual. He says that
What most often weighs you down and brings you misery is the past, in the form of unnecessary attachments, repetitions of tired formulas, and the memory of all the victories and defeats. You must consciously wage war against the past and force yourself to react to the present moment. Be ruthless on yourself: do not repeat the same tired methods…Wage guerrilla war on your mind (the Vietnam War was a Guerilla war), allowing no static lines of defense, no exposed citadels, make everything fluid and mobile.[ii]
This strategy should be one that you constantly apply to your life. Do not allow your past, be it positive of negative experiences, to stop you from moving forward. Learn, and adapt, but do so rationally and with reason. Separate your emotions from the past, and be willing to change how you approach the future.
A Man Must Have a Code
Always be adaptable. This does not mean be utterly changeable. As with everything, there is a balance. You must be willing to change but you must also maintain within yourself a core, unchangeable ethic; a set of values that stays in your center and can guide you as you move forward. Like the north star, or a compass. You should be traveling but maintaining your personal ethic as a guide.
There is a myriad of examples of value systems that can act as your unchangeable center. For some, religion is that system (the 10 Commandments in Judaism and Christianity, the 8 fold path in Buddhism) a code of conduct (Laws, philosophical works) or simply a list of values (the Air Force’s Core Values, the four cardinal Virtues for Stoicism). Any of these are ways to develop a personal ethic that can act as your guide. Perhaps I will write a future letter on how to develop one’s internal compass. For the moment, understand that I am advising you to always be adaptable. But you must also have a part of your soul that can only be changed with much reflection.
Or as Omar Little from The Wire says “A man must have a code.”
The Stoics on Imua
The Stoics have a myriad of teachings that perfectly encapsulate the idea of Imua. First, a core tenet of Stoicism is that we should not let that which we can’t control bother us. As we can’t control the past, we should never fixate on it. Second, The Stoics say that it is never what happens that is bad, but rather our perception of the thing. We can control our perceptions of the past and can choose to be ruled by it or to learn from it and move on. Lastly, Marcus Aurelius says “there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”[iii] Meaning that no matter what challenges arise in our quest to move forward, we can adapt, we can maneuver and learn, and in time those obstacles, cease to be obstacles, and in fact, can become things that help us to continue advancing.
Attack
So, we now have covered that one should learn from the past, but move forward from it, and adapt as conditions around you change. The final part of Imua, that for me is as important as the others is that once must not simply move forward but do so with gusto. Attack! Any challenge before you, any task, any lesson or project, whatever it is you are moving toward, set your sights, and do so with fervor.
As Ovid says “Carpe Diem” (Seize the day). Or, for a less well-known example, in the (fictional) book “The Virtues of War” Alexander the Great counsels “Always attack. Even in Defense, Attack. The Attacking Arm possesses the initiative and thus commands the action.” One must be rational and avoid recklessness. Think through your actions, but once you have decided on a way forward (in line with your guiding ethic) then do not hesitate, Imua!
Σ’ αγαπώ,
Ryan
[i] John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, Paperback ed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).xxii
[ii] Robert Greene, The 33 Strategies of War, 2008. 15
[iii] Marcus Aurelius and Gregory Hays, Meditations (New York: Modern Library, 2003).5.20