00:00:00.000You don't plant an oak tree for yourself. You plant it for the men who inherits the land,
00:00:06.920the men who come after you. Most of us who are listening to this right now are not building
00:00:12.140anything that we won't see finished. A man who builds what he can finish in his own lifetime
00:00:18.640has decided on his own that comfort, that his comfort, that his ego, that his notoriety
00:00:25.400matters more than what comes after him. You have to plant with no promise of shade.
00:00:30.000Men, as we get close to July 4th and also the 250th anniversary and celebration of America's
00:00:40.080founding, I want to share something with you that I think not only will help us realize what
00:00:44.760greater men potentially than us have sacrificed to make this American dream happen, but also what
00:00:51.320we can do as men to honor, respect, and live up to the ideals that these individuals espoused.
00:01:00.000And as we start, I want you to think about something. Imagine something. Close your eyes if you can. If you're on the road, don't. If you're running, don't. But if you're in a position where you can just close your eyes for a second, I want you to imagine something with me.
00:05:36.340that wasn't the time for harvest and now here we sit on the back of or the shoulders of great men
00:05:43.00050 men hundreds of men thousands of men potentially millions of men who came before us
00:05:49.500who did better things than us and we get to sit on their shoulders and tell the world how great we
00:05:56.220are when the reality is is this took 250 freaking years to get to this point
00:06:06.000And in other countries and for our international brothers, longer, 500, 700, 1,000, 2,000 years.
00:06:17.580I'm going to talk about some of our founding fathers today.
00:06:21.080John Adams wrote home to his wife, Abigail, more than once about the price that he was paying.
00:06:30.140He spent years at this point away from his family.
00:06:33.420He spent years neglecting his own farm, his own comfort sacrificed, and he framed it this way more than once actually as a trade across generations.
00:06:49.160He wasn't doing the hard, ugly work of politics and war so that he could enjoy the fruit of it like we do today.
00:06:57.400I mean, you see these dorks and these social media influencers.
00:07:22.880He was doing it so that his sons could have more freedom to build their lives, to build their freedom, their prosperity, their pursuit of happiness, and then their sons and their sons and their sons.
00:07:37.200And he did it so that he could have room to create art and philosophy and the finer things that an incredible nation like ours only affords once all of that fighting and that bickering and that blood is spilled.
00:07:55.320A man like Adams and Jefferson and Washington and Franklin, they knew they would need to get in the mud.
00:08:14.600They needed to so that their kids and their grandkids would get to harvest.
00:08:18.340Jefferson did something very similar, but with his hands in the dirt instead of a pen at Monticello, he planted orchards and trees.
00:08:32.400He calculated on paper that probably at this point would not mature for decades.
00:08:40.320I've got a good close friend of mine. His name is Matt. And his father, Tom, as I was driving around with him in Minnesota on one of my hunts, he's planting trees, acres and acres, hundreds, if not thousands of trees.
00:08:58.000And I said, this is pretty amazing. How long will it take for these to mature? And he said to me, Ryan, you know what? I'll never see these trees mature. I'll never see them mature. But my kids will.
00:09:10.320And my grandkids will. Man, that hit me.
00:09:15.980And that's the story, partly of Jefferson. Trees that he'd be, he'd be an old man before he'd be able to sit under and enjoy some of the shade.
00:09:26.100If he saw it at all, and he probably didn't, he planted them anyways, because that was the whole point.
00:09:30.640You don't plant an oak tree for yourself. You plant it for the men who inherits the land, the men who come after you.
00:09:40.320adams and jefferson weren't being noble for the sake of a good quote like a viral
00:09:48.420we do today they were doing the most basic unglamorous thing that a builder by his nature
00:09:59.520does they're laying a foundation for a structure that somebody else gets to enjoy
00:10:05.860that somebody else gets to stand on, that somebody else gets to build on.
00:10:11.780And I think Washington also gives you a really great example.
00:10:16.040I've studied Washington for a decade at this point.
00:10:20.460And I think there's a movie coming out shortly, Young Washington.
00:10:38.540He could have stayed president or more aptly king.
00:10:43.480He could have been a king in everything but the title, the name.
00:10:49.140A lot of guys around him probably expected it.
00:10:54.360And maybe a lot of guys around him probably hoped for it.
00:10:59.000Instead, what he decided to do is serve two terms as president, and then he left on purpose, not because the job was done.
00:11:06.360It wasn't. Obviously, there was more work to do.
00:11:09.820The country at that point was fragile, and it was unproven.
00:11:17.720It was probably less than a few years from falling apart.
00:11:21.480But because he understood that the precedent of stepping down and planting that tree mattered more than his control, more than his ego, more than making himself a king, if not a god, in the eyes of those who would follow.
00:11:39.420So he built an institution, a very peaceful transfer of power.
00:11:45.720And over the past 250 years in this great nation, we have transferred power, whether you agree, whether you like it, whether you don't like it, whether the president before was good or bad or indifferent or evil or horrible or noble or whatever.
00:12:00.240Every president from that point on has peacefully transferred power.
00:12:05.380Imagine that for a second. Look at any other nation in the history of humankind and ask me where there has been a peaceful transfer of power that doesn't exist outside of the United States.
00:12:25.100And George Washington would never get to test what he implemented, what he believed. He wouldn't be around for the elections 100 or 200 years later that proved whether or not he made the right decisions.
00:12:41.760He handed it off. All of the load bearing sacrifice and commitment, the whole structure and trusted men that he'd never meet, frankly, to keep standing.
00:12:55.900And that's not humility. That's just strategy. That's a man's thinking in centuries while everyone else around him was thinking in years.
00:13:04.680And I found that for me in my own life, the longer I extend my time horizon, the more likely it is that I will make good decisions.
00:13:12.820If I'm making a decision today, in this moment, in this hour, in this minute, I'll probably make a dumb decision because that's where the emotion gets us.
00:13:23.720You know, if I'm feeling uncomfortable, I'm going to do something silly to make myself uncomfortable.
00:13:27.600If I'm feeling lonely, I'm going to go out and reach out to somebody who maybe I shouldn't reach out to in order for me not to feel lonely.
00:13:35.980If I'm feeling sad or broken or downtrodden, I'm going to reach out to the bottle or to drugs or to pornography or to addiction of any sort so that I don't have to feel this in the moment.
00:13:47.320But the longer you extend your time horizon or the decisions you're making, the more likely it is that you'll make good decisions.
00:13:54.240and and here's here here's the turn that i need you to make
00:14:00.700most of us who are listening to this right now are not building anything that we won't see finished
00:14:07.820we're going to build things that we can see finished by friday you know i look around at
00:14:15.880the construction and the building going on i live in southern utah and you know all credit to these
00:14:21.740home builders but you could drive down the road today and see a foundation port and then tomorrow
00:14:28.040you can see not only a frame but it drywalled windows installed being roughed in it's like
00:14:35.620how did that happen in 24 hours everything is about immediate gratification like just get it
00:14:40.840done fast like complete it as quickly as possible to hell with a standard but just complete it as
00:14:46.360quick as possible i mean there's a real pain in doing work that nobody claps for uh that work
00:14:55.700that nobody will see work that won't pay off before you're dead and buried in a coffin in
00:15:02.120the ground and the ants are munching on you but that's part of the culture that we've created
00:15:06.560and part of it is something older than culture it's it's just ego right we want the credit
00:15:14.440And the credit only counts if you're, at least to you, if you're alive to collect that credit.
00:15:24.320But here's a deeper factor hiding over that one.
00:15:30.960And I think it's worth talking about very plainly.
00:15:34.360A man who builds or only builds what he can finish in his own lifetime has decided on his own that comfort, that his comfort, that his ego, that his notoriety matters more than what comes after him.
00:15:49.280And that's the problem with politics today is everybody's thinking about how can I get mine?
00:16:47.280Name the tree that you're planting that you will never sit under.
00:16:50.960I remember when I moved to southern Utah from California, and as my mom and my stepfather, my ex-stepfather, built this home, there was a pine tree that we planted.
00:17:07.960And the pine tree was probably, I don't know, two or three feet tall.
00:17:12.540And I remember I used to jump, literally jump over the pine tree.
00:17:16.680and me and my buddies would see how high I would get over the pine tree and then over the course
00:17:21.600of years and decades and at this point 25 yeah 25 almost 30 years 30 years shit 30 years now
00:17:31.660I drove by uh that pine tree and that house just a couple of weeks ago it's got to be 30 feet tall
00:17:40.020I didn't enjoy that I enjoyed jumping over it but I didn't enjoy the shade
00:17:47.600Well, guys, when you think about what you want to create out of your life, it's not a goal that you're going to hit next year.
00:17:52.960It's something with a longer arc than your own life.
00:23:19.960Ask yourself honestly, if you disappeared tomorrow, does what you built in your life keep functioning or does it all fall apart, break down, wither away in a row?
00:32:04.020Go have your beer and your barbecue and your brats and your burgers and your hot dogs and your bikinis and your fireworks and all the fun things that make Americans American.
00:32:14.480Do it. Love it. Enjoy it. Live it up unapologetically. And also remember that there were men, 50 men, who decided that we're going to live for future generations, not just for ourselves.