The Great Experiment
An Independence Day letter on freedom, disagreement, and the debt we owe the ones who guard it.
Happy holiday weekend! Oklahoma has left us with little doubt that summer is officially officially here.
This spring and summer have been an absolute whirlwind in every single way, both of which were better spent offline. A juxtaposition of so much goodness, like sacred time with family across the country; nose-scrunching laughing with my nieces; settling in to find deep contentment and a true joy with my law firm merger; sunsets that took my breath away. In tandem, I’ll just say a season of business so hard, I can’t wait to see the pearl this stress test creates.
And it’s the Fourth of July, so I’ve had the “why” of all that on my mind more than usual. Because this country was never handed to us finished, either. There’s a reason why it’s referred to as “the Great Experiment”- the byproduct of generations of people willing to work hard for a belief they couldn’t yet prove; a result they couldn’t see yet. But the determination and aspiration to create a new future; the belief that a self-governing people could become something worth being. So on a day built for asking what this country actually is, I’ve been asking myself the same question about my own “richness of life”- and being honest about the answer.
A bit ago, someone said to me, “I hate that you’re willing to work hard and sacrifice play today for a payoff in the future”… and not at all in a complimentary way. A judgement that I, apparently, just wasting my life. The condemnation behind the intention of that statement has been running through my head, and like any good argument, I’ve been running it through the Socratic method in my mind. If you want to argue against something or someone, you better know the counterargument inside and out. More than that, nothing matters more to me than integrity. As I intentionally build a rooted, rich life, I have to be willing to challenge my own thinking: if I say I want a “richness of life,” am I actually living that out?
Absolutely. This country is a great example that grit and faith in the better future you can create are worth the sacrifice. The American Dream isn’t about just celebrating where you are; it’s about what’s ahead. In more recent time, the concept of “the American Dream” became obfuscated. To some, it’s a term half-remembered from a history class. To others, it got flattened into a mansion and a title- more, bigger, faster. A finish line. Something you cross, then coast through life…but that was never “it”.
This country wasn’t built on proof. It was perhaps the biggest gamble in history: that a self-governing people could become something worth being. Not were. Could become. And here’s the part I don’t think we say out loud enough: that gamble was never supposed to get cashed in. The dream isn’t a place of arrival. It’s a “yet.” A country that hasn’t arrived yet. And that “yet” isn’t a problem to solve- the journey is the whole design. We were never supposed to get there. We were only ever supposed to keep going.
So the actual American Dream- the one this country was strange and stubborn enough to build itself around- follows from that: if you see something worth building, you’re free to go build it. With your own hands. On your own terms. Answering to no king, no gatekeeper, no permission slip. Not because you’ll finish, but because you get to keep trying. You, and only you, get to decide to pull up your bootstraps and craft your future.
As of July 1st, I found myself at a crossroads; the biggest since I started this entrepreneurial journey a decade ago. I didn’t clock how apropos the timing was until it hit me: I’m heading into the second half of the year with several doors finally, quietly shut behind me, a decade of work product to show for it, and it’s time to hit the gas on my own version of the American Dream- the one that’s been quietly under construction for longer than anyone realized.
If any of that sounds familiar (or if you’ve got a version of this running in the background of your own life right now) I’d guess you already know exactly what I mean.
Smile at the challenge
I thank the Lord I live in a country that inherently fosters this mindset. Whatever your opinion of the current state of affairs, look at the people who shaped your own journey. I think of my grandfather, who came home from war and started a family ranch from nothing- sunup to sundown, no days off. He’s the one who taught me that my horses never eat a meal after me- always before. Still true today. He’s also the one who taught me to delight in the fact that a seed planted in the dead of winter eventually ripens into the perfect tomato- hard work, and the discipline of delighting in it. Work with your own hands, and then actually enjoy what they made. I think of my dad, too, who started his business entirely on his own- knocking on doors until exactly one person recognized the gumption behind the pitch and took a bet on him. Legacies built on grit and faith, making the next generation better than their own.
That’s not a coincidence. That’s a chosen mindset- the same concept of a “Great Experiment.” By definition, experiments aren’t finished. You don’t run an experiment to arrive somewhere. You run it because you don’t know yet- and you’re willing to find out in public, together, even when the person next to you is running a different opinion or perspective than you are.
That’s the piece I think we’ve lost the taste for; or more honestly, became complacent about. Somewhere along the way, disagreement started getting mistaken for division, instead of what it actually is: the experiment working exactly as designed. You’re allowed to question the country. You’re allowed to question the colleague. You’re allowed to question me. That comment a few months back — you’re willing to work hard and sacrifice play today for a payoff in the future — said like it was an insult? Here’s where I’ve landed: I’d rather be questioned than agreed with by people who’ve quietly checked out. A skeptic still cares enough to push. A cynic already quit. One is doing the work of the experiment. The other one just wants credit for being around.
So disagree with me. Disagree with each other. Just don’t stop showing up to the table to do it- because showing up, arguing it out, forgiving, starting over, that’s not a fault line in this country. That’s two hundred and fifty years of “Great Experiment” working exactly the way it was supposed to.
The critical component to this conversation that we skip past too quickly: none of that room to disagree, to question, to keep chasing the “yet”- was free. It didn’t appear because the American psyche is “simply wired for pioneering.” It exists because other people, generation after generation, made it exist. Manifest destiny isn’t just a phrase in a textbook; it’s a mindset baked into who we are. But that mindset only gets to become a life- your dream, my childhood dream of seeing my thirty-year-old horse outside my bedroom window, my dad’s knock on one more door, a neighbor’s right to see it differently than you do- because somebody, somewhere, is standing guard over the freedom that makes any of it possible.
There’s a line I think about a lot, from West Wing: the idea that if devotion to freedom and democracy is the closest thing we have to a civic religion, then the truest expression of our humanity is a quieter, older commandment underneath it- that we owe the next generation better than what we ourselves were given.
In simple terms: we live in the rarest country in the world. One that fosters aspiration and affords us the freedom to actually chase it. That freedom was never automatic. It’s on loan, guarded daily, by people most of us will never meet.
The Special Forces Support Fund
In 2018, a few of us learned something that made us sick to our stomachs: many special forces soldiers (think Green Berets, etc)- some of the most elite, highly trained soldiers this country has- were shipping out on deployment without all the gear they needed. Not because the Army didn’t care, but because bureaucracy is slow, and these soldiers move fast, quiet, and covert, off the map by design. Some of them, or their families, were paying out of pocket for body armor. For boots that could survive the terrain they were about to be dropped into.
That’s not a policy footnote. That’s a soldier’s wife wondering if this is the deployment where the gap in the paperwork becomes the gap that costs more.
My cofounders and I saw a problem, saw a solution, and built it. That’s how the Special Forces Support Fund was born- a 501(c)(3) with one job: get mission-critical gear directly into the hands of actively deployed Special Forces soldiers, no middleman, no red tape, usually within 24 hours of the request. When the worst happens, we keep an emergency reserve so a family never has to choose between grief and a plane ticket home.
We don’t do it for recognition. We did it because we noticed a gap nobody else was closing- and because the very ability to notice a gap and go close it yourself is the thing these soldiers are quietly making sure we never lose.
Look up the book “Horse Soldiers” or the movie “12 Strong” for context on who we are supporting through the SFSF.
That’s the whole dream, full circle.
You have a version of it too- the thing you’ve been quietly building for a decade, the door that just shut so a better one could open, the dream that’s been under construction longer than anyone around you realizes. You get to chase that. Not because it was guaranteed. Because somebody signed up to guarantee it for you.
So this Fourth of July, I’d ask you to remember: the dream was never handed to us finished. It was handed to us as room to build- and as a debt, quietly owed, to the people making sure that room stays open.
Celebrating this weekend isn’t a celebration of arriving at some certain point- it’s smiling at the challenge that is “the Great Experiment”. That we’re still “on our way.” Some of us are on our way building businesses. Some, building families. Some, both- all just trying to leave tomorrow better than we found it. Some serving, silently, in places we’ll never know about. And some of us just get to say thank you to the ones who do — by making sure they have what they need to come home.
Support the Special Forces Support Fund
Every dollar goes straight to the teams. No middleman. No exceptions.