Naval Gazing: 'Sailing True North'

DC2 Reginald Selgren looks out at the horizon on the flight deck of USS Stockdale (DDG 106) while underway in the Pacific Ocean. (MC3 Abigayle Lutz)

Review by Bill Doughty

The deck of a ship provides a platform to simultaneously contemplate eternity and look within to understand our place in the universe.

"... any sailor can walk out on a rolling deck at night and stare at the distant point where the sky meets and sea and recognize that we are merely the smallest part of a huge and diverse universe that stretches forever unto the mind of God, and which will last far beyond the age of human beings. This combination of attributes – the endless vision of eternity dangling before our eyes – creates a deepening of character in the best of sailors ... and deepen our own characters."

Adm. James Stavridis, USN (ret.), brings us aboard with short biographical stories in "Sailing True North: Ten Admirals and the Voyage of Character" (Penguin Press, 2019). The bios and stories illustrate key character traits: creativity/innovation, resilience, humility, balance, honesty, empathy, justice, decisiveness, determination, and perspective.

Stavridis poses with instructors at the Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center in 2018. (Lt. M. Stroup)

Contemplating "great deep waves" and endless stars above and over the horizon provides perspective through deep reflection. 

Stavridis laments shortened attention spans and constant distractions in recent years that prevent us from reflection and true awareness. The antidote: reading, thinking and learning – reflection.

We can see the future and understand the present by looking into the past as well as the horizon. 

Through personal anecdotes and stories from history, Stavridis teaches about how to achieve a good character and practice good leadership.

Reagan, Lehman and Rickover in 1982.

He compares humble Rear Adm. Grace Hopper with irascible Adm. Hyman Rickover and offers a powerful story of Rickover's confrontation of Secretary of the Navy John Lehman and President Reagan in the Oval Office. Sometimes exemplary (and often flawed) character traits are illustrated in sea stories about such diverse figures as Themistocles, Zheng He, Sir Francis Drake, Mahan, Zumwalt and Nimitz ("In so many ways he was the greatest of the Navy's admirals").

Among the character traits that seem to really set the good apart from the bad are humility, justice, empathy and honesty. "Truth matters for us all," Stavridis writes, "but especially for leaders whose decisions shape the world. Character that is built around a respect, really a veneration, for the truth is the sort of character to have."

As for empathy, this trait when conducted – like gazing at the horizon from a ship's deck – helps us get out of our own skulls, escape the notion that we are the center of world. In that context, Stavridis introduces us to the "brilliant and memorable" speech by David Foster Wallace, delivered at Kenyon College in 2005, "This is Water."

Wallace calls for valuing lifelong education, caring for others, and awareness in living "life BEFORE death." Wallace demands we question what we worship and be open to new ideas. "Blind certainty," had says, is "a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up."

"If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings."

Obviously, Stavridis is open to inspiration from diverse sources in order to overcome our personal default settings. 

Two of Stavridis's mentors, Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, testify at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq, Sept. 22, 2011. (PO1 Chad McNeeley)

"True North" reveals the author's mentors Adm. Mike Mullen, Gen. Colin Powell, and secretaries of defense Bob Gates and Leon Panetta. We read profiles on Adm. Bill McRaven and Adm. Michelle Howard, and we get quotes from Coach John Wooden, Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde.

Wilde's quote, by the way, is a found haiku:

"We are all in the

gutter but some of us are

looking at the stars"

Stavridis offers a wealth of books in his "selected bibliography and further reading." 

"True North" is worth a place on any sailor's bookshelf and is recommended for anyone interested in what it takes to lead an examined life as a good leader.

Happy Thanksgiving indeed.