Paint me red and white

I had every reason to be blue that Thursday morning. Some of you probably heard about the massive traffic jam at the RBC Center. I can testify how real it was.
I packed up five women from our office and we set out for the motivational seminar being held there.
I have to confess I was reluctant to push my girls too much, so I set a time of 6:15 to get started, and we picked up two on the way. Still, we left the last house, on the Raleigh side of Smithfield at 6:50, and you know it only takes 30 minutes to get to Raleigh from there.
While the girls were on good behavior, I was not in a great mood when we finally walked in the door of the RBC at 10 a.m.
As it turned out we missed Coach Roy Williams and Steve Forbes, two of the headliners for the day. What we mostly heard was two speakers, one trying to sell us a stock investment course and another selling another motivational seminar. I have no doubt that both were good, but I didn’t come to buy something else.
I particularly wanted all of us to hear Zig Ziglar, who I have never heard before. Unfortunately, Zig suffered a fall last year, and his dynamic motivational talk was reduced to his daughter asking him to recollect things he has said before.
That left us with General Colin Powell, and after a stressful and disappointing day, I wasn’t sure any of us wanted to wait for that. The vote was unanimous, however, that we stay.
Well, the general didn’t disappoint. He stirred emotions. He struck chords of pride. He said what I wanted to hear. And I think the rest of our crowd was similarly inspired.
I know the Iraq War has many in this country split. The criticisms of the war fill the airways. It’s hard to know how deep the anti-war sentiments in this country run. Obviously it is deep among those who want to criticize the president to promote their own run for his office.
Gen. Powell was not likely to attract an anti-war crowd. We business people tend to be a conservative group, and likely to support those who are pro-business, often Republicans.
Still, I was impressed with how well flag and country and the general played to this crowd. Clearly he could have said he was announcing his run for president and gotten a pretty strong show of support. (He made no hints of that, by the way.)
There was another not so overt theme of the day. Success was the goal, but how do you define success? Well, if you know who Zig Ziglar is, you know he’s a man of faith. What I didn’t know was many of the others there were also people of faith.
There was no altar call, but one of the motivational speakers, and I honestly missed the first part of his presentation, talked very openly about his faith and offered encouragement and support for those who wanted it.
Making more money was one of the themes of the day, you might say the primary theme. Isn’t that what the world says is important? Well, another theme was success that matters. As someone put it, are you climbing the ladder of success to only discover when you reach the top, you’re on the wrong ladder?
I’m not sure all of the speakers on the stage shared that perspective. I think some were there to make money or promote their own agenda. Some were there for a higher purpose, though.
It was good to see that, even in the midst of what could have turned out to be a blue day.