Reluctant Leaders
There's a certain type of person who seems drawn to the work I do.
If you're reading this now, I imagine you're one of them:
Reluctant leaders.
Most of us around here aren't interested in much fanfare, but we do feel called to contribute in some way despite ongoing self-doubt and uncertainty. I'm no exception. More often than not I'd rather curl up with a book and call it a day.
A few months ago one of subscribers to The Gazette asked if I'd share some thoughts on the matter.
With so much uncertainty in the world there are plenty of reasons to shrink, and yet at the end of the day, if you flip the usual question, you'll find that there is more than enough fuel in the tank. I'll share the piece below in case you need a reminder:
You ask about reluctant leadership.
You feel that there is something important, meaningful, and life-affirming within you, and yet you recognize the manifold challenges inherent in its actualization. The burden of leadership is a difficult one to bear.
I was recently revisiting my copy of Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
The book has two parts. The first is an autobiographical account of a psychiatrist’s time spent as a prisoner in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. The second is an exploration of the principles of logotherapy, a psychotherapeutic practice oriented towards meaning.
I rarely bring the word “should” into the conversation, but this should be required reading for anyone with the privilege of time to read. Not only as a reminder of the monstrous cruelty each of us has the possibility to enact, but also as a reminder of that which we can endure and from which we can make meaning.
At one point Frankl says that the heart of logotherapy is an inversion of the question we so often ask when we shrink into a narrow view of ourselves and the world around us.
Rather than ask,
“What do I want out of life?”
We must ask,
“What does life want out of me?”
The tension you feel is the tension between these two questions. It points to an essential struggle taking place within you. Each of us is faced moment after moment with an existential question: to shrink or to expand? Stasis isn’t an option. The default is a vote in favor of entropy, madness, and chaos because things fall apart on their own.
To shrink or to expand?
Do we narrow ourselves for our own self-interest, looking after only our own skin? There are countless reasons to do so. It’s difficult enough to attend to one’s own needs. Bringing the needs of others into our sphere is an added challenge, one that threatens to rip our sense of self apart. It’s said that any true rite of passage involves risk. It would be naive of us not to acknowledge that there is -- at first glance -- a very compelling argument to be made for maintaining one’s own sense of security.
Do we stretch ourselves, taking on a larger role, and bringing others’ skin into our game? Do we claim some responsibility for the well-being and growth of others? Doing so necessitates both sacrifice and faith, sacrifice of the habits of thought and action with which we’ve come to identify ourselves, and faith that we may be far more capable than we realize.
It seems to me that, because we are made of borrowed substance, we owe something to life. We might consider ourselves as the dreams of our ancestors, the hope of life perpetuating itself in the face of myriad ways in which it could cease. We might consider ourselves as the roots of descendents not-yet-known. We might acknowledge that we are woven into time as much as we’re woven into space.
How many countless lives were lived in your lineage before you emerged from the world? How many countless deaths? How much has life endured, that you may be afforded an experience of it here and now? All of that, and yet you and I would sit idle? We would squander it? Far better to turn me back into dust, let some other being choose to make better use of my substance. This, I know, is a bitter pill to swallow.
The responsibility is a crushing burden.
We’re faced with an opportunity to broaden, deepen, and empty ourselves in service of life...
Broadening and deepening into an identification with the people, places, and spaces of our lives, knowing ourselves in the world beyond our skin. Recognizing that we are of the world, not in it.
Emptying out the structure of our neuroses, crafting ourselves into better conduits of life. Making easier the flow of life through us as we flow through it.
I think you are far greater than you yet realize. You are far greater both through the recognition that you have something to offer and the yearning to do so. I trust that by now you don’t see this as merely another platitude. I have no interest in insipid motivational speeches or the artificial propping up of one’s narrow sense of self.
I mean it deeply: there is much more to you than is obvious.
It is a challenge to lead, and yet, if you are able to perceive the challenge, you are able to meet it. You may not yet know how, but something in you does. I have to believe that. I have to believe that we would not be equipped with capacity for perception if not also capacity for action.
It is a privileged position to have the possibility of considering leadership. It implies that you have some breathing room, some space to wriggle and squirm in the choking demands of life.
Those of us who are afforded that space have the choice to make something of it. I believe that some of us must climb the mountain because others can’t or won’t. It isn’t easy. Life won’t promise use that, but it will promise us a choice. What we make of that choice, we make of ourselves. What we make of ourselves, we make of the world.
If you’re interested in learning how to embody this sort of change and be seen as the leader you want to be, I’ve got something exciting coming for you in 2021. Click here to get on the early bird waitlist.