On October 14, 1912, as Theodore Roosevelt stepped out of a car in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a man shot him in the chest from eight feet away.
The bullet passed through his steel eyeglass case and a folded fifty-page copy of his speech before entering his chest. It lodged near his ribs. The thick wad of paper had saved his life.
Roosevelt's team wanted him to go to the hospital. He refused.
He walked to the stage. He unbuttoned his vest and showed the crowd the bloodstained shirt. He told them he had just been shot. Then he said: "But it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose."
And then he gave the speech. Ninety minutes, while bleeding. He stopped only when his doctors refused to let him continue.
The bullet was never removed. It stayed in his chest for the rest of his life.
What strikes you, looking back, isn't the toughness — it's the clarity. He had somewhere to be. He had something to say. He wasn't going to let a bullet in his chest be the reason he didn't say it.
Most of us have smaller obstructions and bigger excuses.
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