Being and Backing Leaders
Re-evaluation Counseling has given me an appreciation of the job of leading. My experience is that leading benefits me. It gives me a picture that I can make a difference, that I can care, and that I can think on a large scale.
Those of us who have struggled to be leaders can appreciate that it takes courage to step into the role of leader. We usually don’t feel “ready”—and we usually don’t have to feel ready. Many times, we aren’t quite ready, but the situation demands that someone take the first step. First is the decision, and next is the work.
It’s hard work, and it’s exciting work. We’re being asked to think about fresh and interesting things, about ideas that compel people to stop and think. Lots of times they are “simple” ideas—for example, that there are no human enemies, and that people are good. When we first heard these ideas, many of us thought, “I knew that when I was two years old. Wow, I’m smart!”
We are all born leaders. When we were young, we spoke up. We opposed things that were wrong. We resisted. Things didn’t make sense, and we said so.
And we got into trouble for thinking, saying, and acting on what made sense to us. We were criticized and demeaned. Or maybe we were appreciated as long as we stayed within certain limits. For example, we could lead, but we had to be nice; lead but comply; lead but be agreeable. We learned that we could be targeted and punished for not agreeing with the way things were. It was scary. Perhaps this made us keep our still “revolutionary” thoughts to ourselves. But I don’t think we ever gave up on [stopped believing] these thoughts—at least not completely. In our hearts we held on to the hopes we had.
This is a good time to discharge on being a leader and about other leaders. We carry distress recordings of disappointment, criticism, undermining, jealousy, and competition that undermine our group efforts. People are likely critical of your and my leadership. They have (in general) been trained not to complain openly to us, but some may be bitterly disappointed. They think that their feelings are about our shortcomings [limitations], not about their disappointment in Mom, Dad, and other early figures who provided hope and then dashed [destroyed] their dreams, who weren’t what they had hoped for.
It seems to me a good time for us, especially us USers, to work on this distress.
DISAPPOINTMENT AND THE NEW U.S. PRESIDENT
The new U.S. president is going to disappoint us. Anyone leading within the capitalist system cannot possibly do the job the way they would like to do it. We’d all like a just and humane world. Can we overturn the current structures quickly? I don’t think so—not without bloodshed and destruction.
I’ve been discharging on the first Irish Catholic U.S. president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. He was assassinated as his wife sat next to him, in her pink suit and pillbox hat. The images were graphic and are indelible in my memory—the motorcade, the grief of millions. Waiting, hoping he would live. The funeral and grief that was both personal and worldwide.
Why do I share this now?
The newly elected U.S. president is not immune to this memory. He remembers. He knows that he (and his entire family) face unprecedented dangers. Those of us who have had to handle attacks have a glimpse of what it might be like to face this kind of threat.
What would it be like to lead three hundred million people, at a time in history when the survival of our planet relies on our best thinking and policy and understanding the biggest context?
I’d like us to model supporting leaders—in particular, leaders who do jobs that are bigger than ours, more critical than ours. I’d like us to get behind [support] some of our imperfect leaders, as we make use of all that we understand. We are also “imperfect.”
Stamford, Connecticut, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for USA political issues
(Present Time 204, July 2021)