Why Not This Why
On my shelf are many
leadership books, which I loved for their emphasis on serving others. But always I stumbled over the nagging
question which came in various forms, "What is your calling? What is your Vision?" These questions have the ironic effect of
turning a desire to serve others into a desire to aggrandize myself, an
endeavor entirely predicated on the thing
that drives me. This is not the fault of the questions, which
must be asked, but of the manifold deceptions that turn all things into grist
for pride. So any proper answer to these
necessary questions would not center on me and would account for my natural
proclivities. For years no satisfying answer
came.
Lately, however, one of Fr.
Hopko's maxims suggested itself as the answer.
Be an ordinary person.
The leadership imperative
as I have understood it, finding one’s core motivation, bears no relevance to this
maxim. And I've begun to catch a glimpse of what I might look like as an ordinary person. Ordinary is beautiful in contrast to the kind
of person I am when trying to be anything else.
When I have tried to be the answer
for the need of a moment, I might have helped momentarily, but what I became was
unsustainable. When I have actively
tried to lead when a situation needed a leader, to step in where others wouldn't, I sometimes met good results.
Unfortunately, and more often, rot took hold in me. I was trying to be extraordinary where others
seemed unwilling to do it. That baited
pride. One thing I have left
untried: to be ordinary. Until recently.
No firm results are yet available, except to report my own reduced anxiety, which in turn helps me navigate relations more relaxed. Couple this to other more general observations, the quelling of drama seems a solid contribution to the world. In this culture where a mindset of advertising and salesmanship dominates, we interact within a medium of hyperbole. We yearn for "the authentic,” unsure even what it is. We all seem to have an unrecognized need for the ordinary. And when we experience a person free from overstatement, from the reflex to hype himself, who is simple, then we feel it, perhaps differently for each, but the positive impact is unmistakable.
No firm results are yet available, except to report my own reduced anxiety, which in turn helps me navigate relations more relaxed. Couple this to other more general observations, the quelling of drama seems a solid contribution to the world. In this culture where a mindset of advertising and salesmanship dominates, we interact within a medium of hyperbole. We yearn for "the authentic,” unsure even what it is. We all seem to have an unrecognized need for the ordinary. And when we experience a person free from overstatement, from the reflex to hype himself, who is simple, then we feel it, perhaps differently for each, but the positive impact is unmistakable.
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