A Meditation

Leadership. A pivotal concept in our society, and yet something which so much of our population lacks a propensity for. Even for my own part, I acknowledge that I have gone so far as to actually aim for a lack of responsibility (which could be said to be part and parcel with leadership – for the crux of the matter is the ability to commit to decisions instead of constantly fluctuating) for a good portion of my life. I'm not sure where that lackadaisical desire comes from, but certainly I wanted no part of 'hard work' at the time, no semblance of having to own up to anything which I might have done had I more resolve.

Instead, I felt the need to resign myself to a submissive position. Over time, both in and beyond the workplace, I still feel this urgency to appeal to others, to seek guidance in their words or their actions. I want them firstly to validate me, to give me a purpose and to deal me a set of tasks. Secondarily I want acknowledgment, a rapport with 'superiors' or 'equals' which denotes a mutual respect for each others' functions and responsibilities. Admittedly and thankfully, this propensity no longer commands a large percentile of my working mind-state. I have found motivation – by degrees – within myself, and can utilize these newfound personal desires to craft my time and activities accordingly without outside input or approval. I now encompass my own approval in the best of times, and this is a perspective to be cherished like one's child – which, on some level, it is.

Even still, however, I find myself appealing to others for their input upon myself and my desires. I find this to be a hard habit, or perhaps vice, to exorcise from personal routine. The rut is that I at once acknowledge the rule as being 'to each his own', especially in matters of personal and artistic investment, while still primarily being domesticated by the need for a group acceptance, an outside acknowledgment of my struggles and subsequent trophies. Of what import are trophies, without any organization to put stock in them?

Thus it comes down to the invisible – potentially imagined – metrics of personal and [humanitarian] development. Just as it is with friends who have not been seen for a length of time (thus seeming much changed, based upon the collective number of small changes built up into a broader observation or scheme), so too it is difficult to measure the variables of our mind – that companion which we can never be quite rid of – be they positive or negative, and to what degree they thrive or suffer. There is no way to step 'outside' of ourselves for an accurate portrait, and so we feel that we must rely on the approvals or disapprovals of those who know us best.

This is a flawed system for a variety of reasons. Firstly, people generally exhibit a bias towards reliability: keeping things just as they are. This is not much to the discredit of humanity, for this assumption creates more manageable mental maps and compasses for us as we navigate through the polarities of the world. Counting on things, including people, to remain the same gives us an advantageous ability to be predictive in future scenarios involving known elements. But for this reason, our friends might be discounted as reliable indicators of our own progress or stagnation. To excel beyond the scope of what you previously had been counted on being may conspire in the minds of those who 'knew' you as a negative trait, as a regression from what they previously knew, since now they cannot be sure of what they know. In all matters, perspective is at the heart of valence. [Additionally] to the point, an inquiry can be made as to whether or not we all experience some degree of schadenfreude, for to see another trapped in a state of general inertia regarding some intangible progression of mind and life certainly occasions a mirroring, a validation of one's own self as being in some way superior, somehow further along or in motion. Ego both feeds and starves on distinctions, on partisanship.

Secondly, if we can throw out the whole 'nobody can ever really know anybody else' idea which is so touted in certain circles, I at least feel confident stating that the only reliable appraisal that can be obtained from another person (when we are confine ourselves to the field of artistic developments) would have to come from someone whom is also a student in the same field of expression, and for accuracy of judgment it would have to be someone who was quantifiably superior to you and – as a final caveat – was also familiar with the progress or detriment of your accomplishments to date. To wit, the only worthwhile yardstick for accomplishment is a teacher. This is not to say that one cannot trust or respect the opinions of anyone else, but rather to say that alternative ideas about yourself or your progress are less likely to be accurate in their methods of distinction and divination, or may be more about the work in itself than about its reflections upon you as a unique force of humanity.

I bring these previous points up because true leadership, in its most meritorious sense as I see it, involves a good degree of humility. To lead is to make decisions, and if the input placed into those decisions is fabricated or misleading then it may become negatively repercussive. To be sure there will be repercussions regardless of the path chosen, but a real decision should be incisive: cut to the core of the matter. It should be expansive in its scope; agreeable in as many capacities as possible to as many different components as possible, but when it comes down to bolts it must also be willing to make sacrifices as necessary for its most genuine realization.

The most pertinent decisions which I find myself making these days are the decisions regarding the expenditure of my time. When I say, 'my time', I must also be candid in explaining that this does not only apply to my 'personal time', because in effect – and what many people seem poised to miss – is that all of my time consists of a conscious decision on my part regarding how it is being used. We may feel resigned to certain places or actions which typically orbit around our jobs or our scholastic endeavors, but if you investigate the scope at play within them you realize the frightening degree of freedom which we are in possession of at any given moment of our lives. This realization is the beginning of leadership; it is the most fundamental of all the structural pillars supporting initiative.

What I come to realize more and more these days is that most of the self-governing and actuated principles that my mind operates upon are beginning to lean further and further away from what my 'job' entails; at this point I would consider myself downright tilted. It may be that I am merely disconsolate about daily repetition of activities, etc., but if the feeling is inspected more closely it allows me to see specifically where the conflicts exist. The principle conflict, for my own part, is a snowballing desire to create....perhaps not even tangibly, but to in every way exist and think and, most specifically, to write creatively. To seek out the chaotic, dynamic mechanisms in my mind, to nourish them in whatever ways they crave, and to express and record the experience. I'm not even certain, at this point, that writing will be the medium of choice, but currently I feel that it allows me the widest range of expression and versatility as I already have mental brushes and palettes painstakingly constructed for this canvas. And some really nice pens.

I cannot say with any certainty what this feeling will lead to. But I bring it up in order to directly address a reef which any seafaring motions towards creative independence must necessarily come to, under threat of being foundered...the ability to actively and consciously engage decisions, and to forge ownership – steeled, individual validity – regarding your terms with them. By 'decisions', I don't mean to imply that I am discussing book plots, or pseudonyms, or anything one typically makes creative decisions about. Well, perhaps books to a degree, in my particular case. Instead, however, I mean to associate fragile, momentary decisions with the timeless quality of leadership, and all the connotations which you may bring to the word...which is what I began scribbling about today in the first place.

For some unknown but rooted reason, I seem to have a difficult time of creativity when I set to it in the moment. This is, of course, a world apart from creativity in theory, when ideas flow like wine. Virginia Woolf - “One line placed on the canvas committed her to innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable decisions. All that in idea seemed simple became in practice immediately complex; as the waves shape themselves symmetrically from the cliff top, but to the swimmer among them are divided by steep gulfs, and foaming crests. Still the risk must be run; the mark made.” If you have tried to create something distinctive, then I'm sure that you too share some knowledge of this anxiety among the front lines of creative forces. This would be entirely tolerable, if it weren't for the fact that it constantly forces you to question yourself. It finds opportunities in which to communicate to you that you are in uncharted territories and that you don't know how to do everything, or even what anything necessarily is. In short, creativity would not be itself if it didn't force you immediately out of your comfort zone.

My instincts until just recently have been to immediately seek reassurance....to stop, to read, to talk to someone safe, to locate comfort quickly. This is a faulty approach, and it lacks the most critical element of success in such matters: personal leadership. Without the strength contained in this engine, your focus will flag, waver, and fail. If you've already sat down to independent creation and accomplished any small part of it, then most likely you are not in terrible shape; no need to panic, you are at least not amongst those who willingly let themselves be entertained into oblivion. Leadership is a muscle, however, and to form resolve and concentrated effort takes a lengthy period of breaking and building.

What must be done is to keep pushing against those waves, because like a coastal tide or reef structure, they only bar your way for a short distance. Once you've navigated the labyrinth of obstacles (which will likely be different each time) and reached a calm focus, real progress can be made, real distance towards the goal. You will still experience catastrophic storms and perils while out at sea, but they will seem more natural, more intentional; you will already be committed to the journey and they will truly seem like challenges which can be overcome, which momentum will push you forward through. Perspective changes significantly when there is no shore in sight. When they are finished, driven through with fortitude, you can again drift along your creative flow; you will have nothing to fight against and the only facet you will need to hold steady to is your orientation amidst the vast horizon of possibilities.

Navigation, however, is a more compound concept than it would seem; nothing that I know of is less straightforward. If you know precisely where you want to end up, then you will have an easier time of it...but as a sacrifice, in a manner of speaking, the journey will have fewer crisis points, less opportunities to discover yourself and your capabilities along the way. For my own part, these crises have been some of the more worthwhile reasons for me to continue writing, even if it doesn't end up amounting to a finished work. To hammer something out, to imbue it with your own personal architecture, to seal it with your fingerprint as a genuine statement about your or the world as you perceive it...this is the real reason to commit to your own leadership, to trust yourself to bear a torch through the darkness and come out somewhere meaningful and symbolic. If you only have profit in mind when you enter into the creative seas, then you might as well resign yourself to being a publisher or a broker instead, for there is no reason, no compulsion for you to make the first or last strokes.

The real reason to create, the most genuine incarnation insofar as I can envision it, is not the moment of completion but rather these smaller victories. A finished work would be nice, but complete realization of my ideals – which also involved defining those ideals to myself in full – is a luxury which I do not expect to achieve anytime soon. For this reason, I don't have a final destination in mind...rather I wander, sometimes aimlessly, sometimes with intense focus, until I experience something like an 'Aha!' moment. This experience is something you are familiar with; it happens in just about every facet of life when something is illuminated to the full extent of your understanding – or in lieu of that, your complete awe. This is the reason to create, and the only reason to share creation is to attempt to gift this intimate moment to others. Sometimes entire books or companies are dedicated to a single, potent moment of thought, which was of such devastating importance to the thinker that it had to be committed to...nothing they had experienced had ever seemed more real, more important to contribute. These moments are the basis of artistic navigation, and they compose the greater part of personal leadership...following the constellations that these individual points compose, as you drift along them through the passage of your life, is the only guide for genuine expression.

Ultimately, if you want to own your work and your life, you have to trust in yourself as a metric. It doesn't matter if you want to lead many people, or just yourself in your personal endeavors...good leadership requires that you have a standard for guidance, that you have a path to follow, even if you may lose sight of it for long lapses of time. This naturally happens when motion is involved. To obtain the focus that is necessary to achieve, you have to have anchors, fixed points upon which your can locate yourself and subsequently pivot off. These points are impossible not to notice; they are impossible to avoid unless you remain stagnant and dig into your routines too fastidiously....what matters is what you make of them, and whether or not you are able to hold them within your vision after they have passed. You might also worry that some fascinations are implanted in you surreptitiously by other people, somehow transferred, or that you have somehow stolen them – but if your interest is genuine, you will know it. The hollow resonance of thieved passions, the faint boredom that you experience when you engage with them is important to distinguish; you must develop a hammer to test and destroy such things in order to be the truest incarnation of yourself possible. The focus and the energy inherent in genuine passions, however, is impossible to mimic. It will define your choices along every step of the way, and illuminate all paths you have yet to travel.