Friday, I flew from Colorado Springs — where I gave a speech to the Heritage Foundation–to Denver en route to New York. A short hop measured in time but for me it had the impact of Lindberg’s crossing the Atlantic.

I sat next to a wonderful young woman, an Air Force Academy cadet, less than a month away from graduation and her status as a second lieutenant. She was bright, poised, attractive, driven, ambitious. She will have a degree inengineering, focused on astrophysics. She plays on the Academy’s tennis team and is nationally ranked.  She can land a job any place she chooses at an excellent starting salary, buy herself a hot car and settle into a cool apartment.

Instead, she chooses to protect her country, fly for the greatest Air Force in the world, hopefully taking command as a fighter pilot. She is from heartland America, was referred to the Academy by John McCain, has a loving  and down to earth family. And is all about sacrifice in the name of red, white and blue.

When I asked her how much money she would earn as a young officer, she told me she had no idea. It doesn’t matter to her one iota. She is all in for America.

As the commuter jet we were flying in leveled off in the clear sky turbulence of a gorgeous Colorado day, she asked me to peer out the window of her beloved school. Pride washed over her as she took in the aerial view of what had been home to her for four years….and what would launch her into the skies for years to come.

I knew her only for minutes, but I will never forget her. I told her she made me proud and more confident about America’s future. And I asked her for a favor that I had no right to ask:

“Please don’t let anyone in your personal life, anyone smaller than you in vision and spirit, hold you back. Please go for it with everything you have.”

She said she had struggled with that but she promised me she would. And I believe her. I am counting on her. As we all should. She comes from a place in the soul of the U.S. where people still serve, where they are proud to defend, where they never apologize for the land of the free, where the hot car and the cool apartment don’t compare to the star spangled banner.

She is our future in a blue cadet’s uniform and a “can do” determination. God bless her!

The other day, I stopped in at a local Starbucks for an ice coffee and a bottle of water.  Behind the counter, an elderly man with a white beard greeted me warmly and served me with dispatch. He was clearly proud to be in that store, wearing a crisp green apron, earning a living and doing a job with pride and dignity.

Everyone would like this man and from what I could glean about him, they would have every reason to do so. As I left the store, I thought to myself that if I were a child again, I might think that he was indeed Mr. Starbucks– the guy who runs the place.

But the fact is, that distinction belongs to Howard Schultz, that rare breed of  business genius who knows how to build an extraordinary enterprise and, in turn to provide employment, opportunity and dignity for nearly 200,000 people around the world.

But in America today, Schultz is not nearly as likeable as the man with the white beard (even though the latter  collects a paycheck and the former creates them.

How can that be? Why is that? Because Schultz has qualities millions now want to villify in a nation that used to pride itself, near universally, on being the land of opportunity. The man who really runs Starbucks is, to many:

• Too wealthy
• Too driven
• Has more than his “fair share”
• A tax dodger of sorts who, no matter how much he pays, doesn’t pay enough

For his very success, Schultz is considered, by many, to be somehow evil. One who gamed the system. A one percenter.  The enemy!

What is really at play here in the case of two Starbucks men, is that as human beings we are NOT created equal. Some have a head start that carries them for life. They are smarter, more talented, infused with far high levels of ambition and blessed with a grand vision and the wherewithal to bring it to life.

That they could do so in America and be celebrated for their success and the rewards that brought to others is what made us the envy of the world.

But now the Schultz’s of our land are culprits, the white beards their victims and this is the culture our kids have to live with.

It’s more than a tale of two men. It is a story of two profoundly different views, philosophies and times.

It all starts with the first sun-tanned days and sultry nights. That exuberant sense of wonderment, of infinite opportunity, of romance and playful freedom that is carried along in the joyous aroma of summer. Of a summer about to bloom. Of one stretching out as far as the eye can see, making everything seem possible and perfect.

At some point in all of our lives, a love is mixed into the brew. We meet, fuse our bodies under the Milky Way, kiss on the beach with an exhilaration cast under the spell only June, July and August can radiate. We swear it is forever. We are convinced it is undying love.

In most cases, it is cold and withered when the last lifeguard leaves the beach. It may endure, of course, but in love, business, all of life, I am always mindful of Isaac Newton, specifically his law of science\love\commerce that every action   has an equal and opposite reaction.

As the summer moon transitions through its strawberry phases, the champagne exuberance of Memorial Day gives way to revelations that the perfect love is hardly without flaw. The business relationship that would be a heady and seamless collaboration is just another partnership frayed around the edges. What begins with an explosive sense of perfection, of absolute ecstasy, is almost always headed for a head-on collision with the  high speed roller coaster of life.

Given this reality, what do we do? Refrain from the joy based on the knowledge that it is likely fleeting? That it may morph before our hearts and minds into pain, disallusionment or even sorrow? Of course not. To do so is to reject life outright, for it is always a ride that– if we are willing to embrace it with arms and hearts wide open– gives us far more than it takes.

At first pain\loss\defeat, losers recoil to the illusion of a safety zone. The winners, the adventurers, greet another summer with the highest expectations and go back into business convinced this time they will succeed.

The ghosts of fall will never deter them.

Seems like an absurd question because judged by every substantive viewpoint, Einstein was beyond beautiful–in a rare and striking place all of his own.

But when the great man, the genius looked in the mirror, did he yearn at times to trade places with Cary Grant? Would the physicist who loved women and often played them like an algorithm he cooked up when we wasn’t preoccupied calculating the universe, wish he was more of a heart throb than a  museum piece?

Which begs the question, do we all pine for that which we don’t have? Did Tyra Banks recently graduate from a Harvard business program because she wants to be seen less as a siren and more as a master of managerial protocols and balance sheets. In other words, when the super model looks in the mirror,  does she want to see less of what she knows she has and more of what she wants to have?

In youth, we all crave to be attractive above all else. As life evolves, that desire remains but for most this gets diluted by the pursuit of what are widely considered to be more worthy goals: intelligence, success, innovation, wealth, health and longevity. What remains constant, however, is that if we are fortunate enough to attain these aspirations, they are often accepted as baselines from which we must move on to other achievements or possessions.

From the moment he became truly cognizant, Bill Gates wanted to be, and to recognized, as a world-class CEO. A captain of industry. A billionaire who would not cede a penny in negotiations of any kind unless he was forced to by the full power of the US government and its antitrust laws. He would even seek to, and succeed at, clawing back equity from his weaker and less voraciously ambitious partner.

And then when Gates had it all, when no one in the world was richer than he, when he could look in the mirror and see the uber capitalist he dreamed of becoming, he decided that he wanted to morph into the polar opposite of what had defined him until that point: an immensely generous philanthropist.

The fact is, change is the agent that powers a rich and fulfilling life. Those who continue to tack in new directions are not unhappy. They are the explores who discover the other side of the moon.

Ever since we are quite young, we face opposite–and often contradictory–ends of a spectrum as we seek to live and guide our lives. Put simply, do we want to become the world’s greatest boy/girl/scout in the world or do we prefer to use all of our gifts to become the world’s richest man\woman.

It may seem, at first blush, that it is quite possible to achieve both goals simultaneously. That we can be icons of honesty and altruism as well as masters of the machinery of business and other routes to financial success.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  The fact is, to be an extraordinary wealth-builder or an extreme success in any field—one has to trade some of the boy scout for some of the traits of dominance, deal-making and self-centeredness that leads to a Tiger Woods, a Mark Zuckerberg, a Barack Obama or a Mitt Romney.

Let’s put Zuckerberg under the microscope for a moment. When Facebook’s founder was rocked with a more or less legitimate claim that he should share the wealth with twins who had a reasonable claim on the company’s ownwership, Zuckerberg surveyed the goal posts and chose to go for the world’s richest man — as opposed to its eagle scout extraordinaire. In spite of the fact that he claims money means little to him, the young CEO marshaled all of the cunning, chess sense and high-powered lawyering available to him, to fight for the wealth at the expense of the boy scout. I don’t come down on either side here, except to demonstrate the goal posts’ duality we all face. And to add that those who chose the fairness actions and principles to a T, usually wind up as far less successful than their more “ruthless” counterparts.

Every time we make a significant decision and base an action on it, we take a chip from one side of the life column or the other. And this impacts greatly, for good or bad, the kind of person we are.

I used to believe that the boy scout\captain of art, science or industry could be embedded in the same person but now I know that to be an illusion, a pipe dream. For years, Warren Buffett appeared to be the giant of capitalism who made every decision with the fair innocence of a Goldilocks. That’s until you see how he plays the populist role on taxes with one hand and with the other, battles the government over more than a billion dollars his empire is said to owe. And how he supports political figures whose programs wind up enriching his coffers.

Modest home in Omaha, yes. Smart ruse? To be sure. Boy scout? Hardly.

Another fact, surprising to most who wave the boy scout banner, is that those who do indeed live closest to this honorable code, are rarely deemed to be successful. They never make the headlines. Are never widely-viewed as role models. No one writes books about them.

And yet they are to be admired. They are:

*The teachers who toil away in quiet, more focused on student achievement

than union benefits.

*The accountants who blow the whistle on financial wrongdoing whatever the

consequences to their careers.

*The scientists who conduct experiments through the lonely nights and if

they develop something exceptional, reject the financial rewards that go

with them and just keep seeking greater truths.

Are you willing to go through life as a poor and unknown purist or does the other goal post secretly draw your attention?