Meditations on Leadership

Why do you want to be leader?  Is there any reason to desire to lead?

You want fame? “People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too.  And those after them in turn.  Until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, gutters and goes out.  But suppose that those who remembered you were immortal and your memory undying.  What good would it do to you?  And I don't just mean when you’re dead, but in your own lifetime.  What use is praise, expect to make your lifestyle a little more comfortable?”

Are you ambitious? “Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say to do.  Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you.  Sanity means tying it to your own actions.”

Are you upset about the way things are and want to change them?  “And why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice!”

Do you just want to make the world a better place?  “Don’t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole.  Don’t try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen.  Stick with the situation at hand, and ask, ‘Why is this so unbearable?  Why can’t I endure it?’ You’ll be embarrassed to answer.”

And so, Marcus Aurelius, leader of the Roman Empire when the Roman Empire was Big, advises you in Mediations, a veritable manual on leadership.  If you are a leader, then lead.  If you are not, the don’t.

“Do what nature demands.  Get a move on—if you have it in you—and don’t go worrying about whether anyone will give you credit for it.  And don’t go expecting Plato’s Republic; be satisfied with even the smallest progress, and treat the outcome of it all as unimportant.”

Control your desire and you’ll be fine:

“Start praying like this and you’ll see.

Not ‘some way to sleep with her’—but a way to stop wanting to.

Not ‘some way to get rid of him’—but a way to stop trying.

Not ‘some way to save my child’—but a way to lose our fear.

Redirect your prayers like that, and watch what happens.”

With the fourth book in our series on leadership, we are once again in new territory.  Carnegie tells us leadership is technique; Homer tells us it is action; Plato tells us it is philosophy; Aurelius asks us why we care so much.  Marcus Aurelius was surprisingly popular with the students in the course. To be sure, they didn’t like the Stoic extreme, but some sort of Stoic-light, they would enjoy.  (They seemed to think there was something unnatural about saying that if my wife died in a fire, I should just say, “It is in the nature of humans to die,” and leave it at that.  They all thought I should be sad at the idea of my wife dying.  One student was so worried about the matter, she asked me later in the day if I really would be sad if my wife died—apparently she is terribly concerned that I really am a Stoic.)  Is there a half-way house here?  Can you sort of give up the desire to be a leader—can you just sort of want to be a leader and still be a good leader?  If Aurelius is right, the desire to have things as they are not is doomed to lead you to misery.  All of which makes it an interesting question for a leader—if the goal is to accept things as they are, then to what exactly is one leading?  How do you reconcile the seemingly tautological statement that “A leader must lead somewhere” with the Stoic belief that there is no point in wishing things were different than they are.  Is it even possible to lead like that?  Doesn’t leadership necessarily mean wanting to control things outside of your own desires?

It is inevitable: all of life ends here.  After reading Marcus Aurelius, it seems obvious that he would fully embrace that song.  But, then, what is the point of leadership?

[As an aside: last night Janet and I were at my in-laws playing pinochle, our usual Sunday evening pastime.  I got to wondering if there was ever a song about Pinochle.  There appears to be exactly one.  The link is above.  Who knew that a song about pinochle and a song about leadership and Marcus Aurelius would prove to be one and the same song?  Life is odd like that.]