Leaders may emerge in our minds as grand figures at the helm of banks and corporations, spearheading the economic progress of a nation. Or leaders may be revolutionaries who seek to transform social and communal structures, to hack through the rigidities of perverse mental conditioning and tear apart barriers of taboo built on foundations of ancestral propaganda.
We often forget to see the leader in each one of us. A leader, not to rouse the masses or pioneer the markets of trade, but to direct his own life with cognizance of his actions. A leader who lets his worries come to the fore of his thoughts and peers at them with near sagacity, taking away their daunt over him. Someone who warmly appreciates the many talented musicians and gifted scholars around him, whilst graciously accepting that he is beholden, as everyone is, to the fact that one can’t be good at everything. A leader who recognizes his own potential for a full and lovely life; he gently guides himself along the roads, winding though they may be and laden with taxing obstacles as such roads always are, which will sprout contentment for him in simple daily living. He finds joy in small, overlooked events like an untimely drizzle that cools the day or sipping the perfect cup of coffee, swaddled in blankets on a freezing day as a heart-warming song serenades you.
Business leadership, military leadership, and even the political kind have such abundant pursuers that numerable institutions provide academic teaching for them. But whether one falls in such categories or not, we all must live our lives and all of us are keenly conditioned that ours is a purpose to improve in every way we can. Yet nowhere is this skill of lucid self-understanding and wise self-management taught. It’s a skill which would equip us with far more efficient mental tools to handle ourselves when a single disruptive thought poises itself to ruin a day that was going rather splendidly.
Then, as the current state of institutional education is, the stirring to find a true leader in ourselves must be jumpstarted by our own need for the same. One never knows the cost of passively wandering through your life till all that you could have done but did not comes rushing at you in a towering wave of regretful bewilderment. You need an ever-present friend and mentor to navigate such travails and keep your sanity. And being that for yourself is one of the best things you can do.
The world is saturated with vast multitudes of disturbing, depressing, and confounding things. There is simply too much for any one person to know or understand. But to make sense of ourselves is a worthy endeavour for us terraforming apes.
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