This may be the most basic of all childhood games.
The rules are simple:
Choose a leader.
Then do everything they do—until someone else takes the lead.
Leadership tends to rotate.
But creative, fun leadership usually wins out over the boring kind.
Recently, I watched a TED Talk by Lt. General Mark Hertling.
It was eye-opening, forward-thinking, and convincing.
It reminded me of two things:
First, that I’ve had the privilege to know several military leaders I would follow anywhere.
And second, that some leaders—military or not—can spot a crisis
long before anyone else even sees the smoke.
Hertling is one of those.
Highly trained, experienced in combat,
he was promoted to command basic training for the Army.
Now, I remember basic training.
Eight weeks of grueling physical and mental strain.
(Mental strain may have taken longer to kick in—
but the physical part? That came fast.)
I’d already done a dozen or so heavy-pack hiking expeditions as a civilian.
But the military pushed further.
That spare tire I was growing? Gone.
Morning PT before breakfast built an appetite—burned off instantly.
We even had to cross a 20-foot section of monkey bars
just to reach the mess hall.
So imagine my surprise when the general said this:
Most new recruits today fail to qualify physically.
Not pass barely—fail entirely.
In the ’70s, most of us were draftees.
And we still passed.
So what changed?
The answer was as troubling as it was predictable:
Obesity.
Not just “couch potatoes.”
Professional couch dwellers.
Video-gaming, sedentary, screen-locked young adults with no high school PE credits.
Wait—no PE?
Somehow, across the country, boards of education have made PE optional in later high school years.
And students—unsurprisingly—opted out.
Meanwhile, average screen time soared:
Five to six hours a day, minimum.
Cable channels exploded.
Gaming companies captured generation after generation.
Captured—and concentrated.
Not in camps.
Just in their bedrooms.
Comfortable ones.
Stocked with sugar drinks and snack foods.
But if an enemy wanted to weaken a country,
they wouldn’t need camps.
They’d just invent an addictive video game.
Maybe two.
And remove PE from the curriculum.
This was General Hertling’s warning.
He worried about future recruitment.
Worried he wouldn’t be able to fill the slots.
Right now, less than 1% of the U.S. population serves in the military.
He believes that number isn’t sustainable.
So here’s the question:
Can we still follow the leader?
Or are we too winded to even keep up with the 1% who can?
Watch the TED Talk.
A Work Progressing 