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Enlightened Leadership

“There is a tendency among us Americans, common and obvious enough, recommended by common sense and successful practice, to estimate a person’s aptitude for a profession or for a career by listing his strengths…There is a different question…Is this man weak enough…?  Is this man deficient enough so that he cannot ward off significant suffering from his life, so that he lives with a certain amount of failure, so that he feels what it is to be an average man?  Is there any history of confusion, of self-doubt, of interior anguish?  Has he had to deal with fear, come to terms with frustrations, or accept deflated expectations?”

                                        Michael J. Buckley

                                        “Because Beset with Weakness”

        

         In America, we tend to think in superlatives—the best car, the best neighborhood, the fattest bank account, the handsomest face, the biggest star.  We see these as pluses.  We equate them with ‘success.’  Woe to the one who falls from these heights due to failure of any kind, due to sickness, or stupidity or a moment of weakness.  Especially now, with our twenty-four/seven news feeds constantly scouring the land for soundbites of information to satisfy their ever-hungry-for-dirt patrons.  We take someone’s life apart piece by piece and examine it in minute detail.  The failures of any high-flying person are our favorite food.

 

         As much as we hate it, it is ‘significant suffering’ that makes us human; that gives us skills such as compassion, understanding and empathy.  It is living with a certain amount of failure that allows us to move beyond our egos to a sense of ourselves as just another one of the guys.  If we have never failed, we judge those who have, and if we have never seen a day of need, it is easier to criticize those who live day to day in need. 

We say that our leaders are out of touch with what is going on in the ‘real world.’  Yet, if they are human enough to live in the ‘real world’ of frustration, confusion and weakness, we skewer them and then proceed to trash their very existence.   We force our leaders to be stuffed shirts who never admit to mistakes rather than true human beings with warts and bumps like the rest of us.  It is a paradox and a conundrum.  We want leaders to whom we can relate, but they can’t show any signs of weakness. 

Let us begin to change this skewed sense of reality lest we end up with no one of substance who is willing to lead us.  Right now, we need enlightened leaders at every level of life and governance.  Pray that we can allow them to be human beings with a few ‘stellar’ flaws. 

                          Shalom,

                          Jane