PIPPIN: I
didn't think it would end this way.
GANDALF:
End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we
all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to
silver glass, and then you see it.
PIPPIN:
What Gandalf? See what?
GANDALF:
White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.
PIPPIN: Well, that isn't so bad.
GANDALF:
No. No, it isn't.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Its children’s
day as I write. There were mockery in the group today about wishing me for this
day, as a reward for being childlike. There, childlike. Judgement free, low on
baggage and little insecurity. It makes me behave in the way I do, and it’s not
easy to keep away judgement or baggage or insecurity. A comment like that would
have riled me up a few years back, made me hate the guts of these people who
could say such a thing and even severe ties with them. It’s a perceived threat
to my strong emotional shell that could have made me react that way. In the present
though, I enjoyed it, smiled and felt happy that people around me can see that I
am a child. It meant a great deal.
It also
meant that I wear my emotions on my sleeve and am fragile and vulnerable in
that manner. That was okay, it was a realization. The ability to gauge the
emotion of a person, a group or a situation is hard on me but has its value nevertheless.
It tells me what I feel and it also gives me a hint of what the rest of the
people around me want to feel. This creates a connection to the here and now. And
sometimes, rarely though I admit, it creates a situation where time and space
become greyed out and I don’t consciously realize my own existence and connect
to the situation. Looking for this kind of experiences did not lead to the
ability in recognizing emotions, as the class exercise proved, I was not very
good at even reading a person’s face to understand what emotion the person was
exhibiting, but there is this skill in me to recogonize the emotion of a person
and react accordingly. The days it failed were mostly with my supervisors and
almost never with my team. This made life hard, the importance I placed on my
team’s emotional state was much higher than that on my own, it was just my
nature, a natural state of flow. This ability gave high performance capabilities
in running my team, official or otherwise, with the ability to create an
environment of acceptance and creativity, for the entire state of flow was
grounded on empathy, towards the world and the system. It has its holes, that
is for introspection rather some time else.
The most
primal emotion at a work place or in a group is the fear of constant change. The
uncertainty it brings can be mind boggling. A true leader is aware of this
state in his team and creates an environment where the fear of change is easy
to deal with. Openness and mindfulness is the key. Being open, in way that the
leader expresses truly what he or she feels about the change is critical,
rather than striving to create an inspirational figurine that is outside the
realm of imitation. Look what happened to Gandhi. The way his face is now used,
his life is now quoted, his principles have now come to be known as something that
a normal man cannot aim for, quite conveniently. A leader should also be
mindful, not just about his state of mind, but also about the people who look
up to him or her for direction and purpose. This state creates a channel of
energy that then feeds on itself and gives a network of courage to all in the
team to face the challenge of change. This state comes with being open to
emotional fragility, though, I would like to believe, the fragility goes away eventually
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