Latest / The Masonic Journey / Truck Talks - The One Leg
Transcript
- Josh Kelley: Hey everybody. Well, I just finished up my appointments for the day. And both of the appointments had something in common. They were what we call, in sales, a one-leg. Now, if you've never worked in sales, a one-leg is when you show up for an appointment where a decision needs to be made by two people. But only one of those decision makers is there. Maybe it's a husband without the wife. Maybe the wife without the husband, maybe it's two business partners and only one partner shows up. You can have a great conversation, you can inspect the property, you can explain the product and drop down the best price that they ever saw. You can answer every question that person has. But eventually you reach a point where they say I need to talk to my wife. I need to talk to my husband. I need to run this by my partner. And that makes sense. Because something is missing. You know, driving away today I started thinking about how perfectly that illustrates something that we're taught in Freemasonry. You see a lodge is said to be supported by three great pillars wisdom, strength, and beauty. Wisdom to contrive, strength to support, and beauty to adorn. It isn't just poetic language. There's a deeper idea there. A structure needs balance. Take away one of the supports, and something's missing. That's really what a one leg is. It's trying to make a complete decision with an incomplete structure. The person sitting across from me might completely understand what I'm saying. They might even agree with everything that I presented. They may even like the vibe. But there's a perspective that belongs in the room that is not there. Another voice. Another set of questions. Another person affected by the decision. And I think we do this in life more often than we realize. We make decisions with only one leg. Sometimes we make decisions with wisdom, but no strength to act on them. We know exactly what we ought to do. We've thought about it. We analyzed it. We've planned it out. But we never actually do anything. That's a one leg. Sometimes we have strength, but no wisdom. We act quickly. We push forward. We are determined, but we haven't stopped long enough to ask whether we're moving in the right direction at all. Another one leg. Sometimes we accomplish something, but we forget about beauty. And by beauty I don't just mean whether something looks nice. I mean harmony, proportion, the way our actions affect the people around us. You can technically be right and still handle something completely the wrong way. We can win an argument and damage a relationship. You can accomplish the objective and lose something more important along the way. Wisdom, strength, beauty. We need all three. And I think that applies inside the lodge too. A lodge can have tremendous ritual knowledge and never put anything into practice. Wisdom without strength. A lodge can be incredibly busy, constantly doing events and programs without ever stopping to ask why it's doing them. Strength without wisdom. A lodge can have excellent ritual and successful program, but lack. Harmony among the brethren. Structure is still incomplete. And maybe that's a question worth asking ourselves personally. Where am I trying to live my life on one leg? Is there something I know I need to do, but I haven't developed the strength to do it? Am I charging into something without seeking enough wisdom first? Am I accomplishing things while neglecting the harmony and relationships that give those accomplishments meaning? Freemasonry constantly reminds us that the work of building a man requires balance. No single working tool tells the whole story. No single virtue completes the work. No single pillar supports the entire structure. The goal isn't simply to know more. It isn't simply to work harder. It's to become a more complete man. So today, I had two wetlands. I didn't even bring up numbers. There was no point to it. I just rescheduled them. Maybe I drove away with something more valuable than a sale. A reminder that anything worth building needs the proper supports underneath it. Wisdom to guide us, strength to carry it out, and beauty to bring it into harmony. And maybe before we make the next big decision, take that next action or try to build that next part of our lives. We should ask ourselves, do I have all the legs under this thing? Until next time, brothers, live the craft and give the craft.