when everything fails...

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that in 1963. And it holds a truth most men spend their whole lives avoiding: every man carries a picture of who he is, and as long as life is going well, that picture is easy to believe. Then everything fails, and the picture is put on trial. This film is about that trial. What the word crisis first meant. What Thomas Paine wrote in December 1776 about the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot. The six things the test actually asks of you. And what Mencius said, more than two thousand years ago, about the man Heaven is preparing for something. If the weight ever feels like more than you can carry, say so out loud to someone today. That isn't failing the test. It's passing it. CHAPTERS 0:00 The measure of a man 0:19 The picture of who you are 0:45 Then everything fails 1:06 Crisis: a judgment, a decision 1:36 December 1776 2:19 Summer soldiers of our own values 2:35 Integrity: whole, untouched, undivided 2:55 What we obtain too cheap 3:13 What the test asks 3:23 I. The truth 3:43 II. The work 3:59 III. The people around you 4:17 IV. Your word 4:32 V. Letting someone in 5:01 VI. Staying. A season, not a moment 5:24 Mencius 6:29 The question to ask in the wreckage 6:54 Smile in trouble, gather strength, grow brave 7:42 The only honest season 8:17 Five things to do in the wreckage 8:30 Let it be you SOURCES Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love (1963). Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, Number I (December 1776). The printed lines on screen are from The Works of Thomas Paine (Philadelphia, 1797). Mencius, Book VI, Part II, chapter 15. The Chinese text and the proverb's English are from James Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1895). "Krisis": the heading on screen is the Hippocratic book On Crises, in Greek and Latin ("De Iudicationibus"), from the Foesius edition of Hippoc