A recent ‘Time Magazine’ cover was entitled ‘The Decade From Hell.’ I could relate. In this decade I lost over $700K and my career when an accident ended my ability to manage multi-million dollar projects nationwide. I returned to UCLA to complete the writer’s program and a novel based on the French proverb that ‘With a valiant heart anything is possible’.

Days after my manuscript was returned from the editor I was elated, and then quickly devastated by the news that my brother was dead from a tragic suicide. He was the very last person anyone could imagine being a statistic from the Decade of Hell.

A graceful, witty, J-Crew kind of guy–from childhood he was ultra-responsible and a moneymaker with traditional, near Boy Scout kind of values. His ultimate self-definition seemed to be as a provider. Though at times, I couldn’t decide if he was pragmatic or fatalistic when he’d expressed that there was nothing beyond this life. When he was caught in the ‘Perfect Storm’ of the economic crash and knowing that his own death would set his family financially for life–it seemed his self-definition had a hand in his action. Knowing that he didn’t wish to die, but saw it almost as a duty based in his self-belief nearly killed me from overwhelming grief.

Sustaining Core Beliefs:

The heroes in ‘The Decade From Hell’ are not on K-Street, on Wall Street, and few are in Congress. Our economy was turned into a casino set on quicksand by the conjunction of many in those groups that acted in accord to rescind the 1932 Glass Stegall Banking Act and to deregulate derivatives in order to game the system of trillions of dollars. In the process, tens of millions of innocent citizens have seen their lives crashed-down. The Citigroups, Bank of Americas, and Goldman Sachs caused the total ‘value’ of deregulated derivatives to skyrocket from $9T in 2002–to $1.14 quadrillion today when our total global economy is approximately $60T. This is insanity and those same Wall Street crooks that destabilized the global economy, were bailed out with hundreds of billions of our tax dollars, and are now passing out multi-million dollar bonuses to each other.

The real heroes are the Katrina survivors who four years later are still living in devastation. They are those who invested noble service to corporations, industries or the military and had pensions gutted, careers ended, or found little support when they returned broken from wars. They are the 20-million that go hungry every day in this country-including members of ‘The Greatest Generation’ that are standing online at food banks. Those who lost their homes when their mortgages were sold into billion dollar ‘betting’ pools of worthless derivatives. They are small business owners that have been shutdown by tightened credit and consumers that are squeezing pennies. The heroes are the survivors of this Decade from Hell.

Valiance:

In researching my novel for a historic archetype of transformation, I came to agree with Mark Twain who said that 17-year old country girl Joan of Arc was the ‘Greatest Human Being That Ever Lived.’

Though she’d never previously left her village, shot a gun or rode a horse, she led her nation’s broken army, and within days turned around the bloody Hundred Year War to save occupied France. She performed unheard of feats that forever altered western civilization–and remains counted among the Top Ten Generals of all time.

What set her apart in an era of extreme darkness was valiance. The illuminated quality of heart, mind and soul that enables a person to face danger and hardship resolutely. Valiance is the dauntless bravery, fortitude, and clear-sighted courage that ignores fears to focus on facts and find a strategically superior way forward.

The heroes today are not the fat-cats that have been handed much by virtue of family legacies, fortuitous marriages, or old boy networks–but those who’ve walked through this mean decade determined on new personal mountaintops, despite the ‘Perfect Storm’ that has hit most of us.

When the sea is stormy and you’re hanging-on that is the time to jettison anyone or anything that is a weight and hindrance. To place all energies and focus on end objectives. It is when self-belief and self-definition are the difference between survival and death. Knowing for certain that you are from your very core an eternal hero, and that valiance will supernaturally empower that internal hero to see you through. Not just through the Perfect Storm–but onto new heights that you could have never envisioned before.
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