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Every leader, regardless of their origin, must possess the motivation to be a leader. I have always found that those who made the great impacts that we remember, and are best remembered, are those who endured through overwhelming trials or traumatic events. The situation some of these leaders endured can be considered overwhelming. Leaders, for the most part, can be great leaders, but if there is no passion for continuing they fall short of their dreams. These trials sparked the motivation and passion to change lives. The most important part about being and wanting to be a leader, foremost is the want of changing another's life for the good. Having said that, love of a mother and son is a powerful love, that can be underestimated. Written below is a short story, based on a son who seeks to be redeemed, after the loss of his mother. A mother that he disappointed, and lost all hope of ever making proud. So he chose to turn his life around, for others, and with the memory of his mother to push forward. His ethical dilemma was lying. Lying brought forth the impact that withered a friendship between mother and son. Nelson Mandela, rose to combat the apartheid. Winston Churchill, rose to fight evil in europe. This son, rose to fight the lies bestowed on his mother by himself.
Love; Of all things, love is mysterious. A natural occurrence, but yet just as much human. Love is happiness, as much as it is fear. To attach love to someone, is to attach a commitment. From the beginning you have always loved someone, your mind will dwell, where I speak not of. Your first glimpse of the world, to the first friend you made in kindergarten. She was always there. As a child you constantly talked of great magnificent things and you made a promise to be the best. You spoke of being a dream and inspiration to others and you always had that convincing smile. You told of being a doctor, a philosopher, an astronaut, a mathematician, an entrepreneur, a motivator. The way your face glowed with passion and excitement was more to make her believe in your future. Late tiresome nights, she worked for you. She came home everyday to cook for you. You were to bring the suffering into the light and conquer the pain of yourself, of others, and most importantly of hers. The way her body grew weak from the hours of labor showed a promise she made to you long ago, before your mind could remember. She held you, when you got hurt. She held you, when you cried, she was there when others were not. Then you fell off. Those promises erodes into dust lost in sand, unable to be retrieved as they fade with the promise of the time given. You got lost in indulgence, and in that sea of confusion you lost her. You came home from a party one late friday night, the day after you had disappointed her not for the first time. Your mother was gone; She had passed away.
Would all your promises, which have already began to erode away, be a lie? Now you face the worst ethical decision in your life. An existential crisis. After all you made a promise, which you knew was a statement that did not have your support from the beginning. This moment of great despair would be a time of either redemption or of withering.
Those lies have all accumulated into a deception, a lifelong deception to yourself. You deceived yourself, for you made fragile the trust between what truly can be considered a genuine love.
If this occurred to you? If you read this to your mother, and looked her in the eye. How would you feel? If you told her all the lies you made, all the times you deceived her, and all the promises you will never keep. Would she see you the same?
Stay true to others and yourself
Like many great leaders beforehand and of past times, you have found the reason to make a difference. You have been pushed forward onto a crossroad. To either remain irrelavant or to change the lives of others from the experience of your own pain. The days have gone by, and you find yourself on a new life perspective. You want to make good on your mistakes. To teach those before they live through what you have felt. You have never been much of a manager nor a leader, regardless you are determined to try. The memory of your mother, and what she had done for you feeds the fire to keep on striving down the path towards the destination of your goal. You now stand in front of those who you will soon lead.
The first hard decision you’ll have to face, is who can stay and who must go. To form a team. Whose life will change because of you, and whose will be out of luck. Who will encourage cohesion and who will bring down the group. Prying each individual of his or her abilities is high on your list, but it is not the most important thing. How he or she thinks is what you're after. Does the person care about the group? Does the individual care about his or her ambitions or the goals of the group? Can you find the motivation behind what they are saying, are their lies apparent in what they say? Making a decision based on one meeting is a difficult one, one that most leaders take very seriously for many reasons. You are after all bringing an individual into an already existing social dynamic or a social group that has to be established in well polished cohesion. Throughout this process, you must keep in mind your own goal. That goal is to find yourself not in the sea of confusion, where you made fragile that genuine love years back. To form a team, that can change the world. A team that can function. So you must make the hard decision, regardless of their life story or how they stirred your emotions. A leader must keep true to this promise, goal, and strategy, as much as he must stay true to health and friendship. The dynamic between caring for oneself and others is very emotional and fragile, but the group must always come first. However, there will always be occasions when your morals and ethics will be tested. Stay true to them. Surrendering your morals, is like traveling down a path without legs.
“The way her body grew weak from the hours of labor showed a promise she made to you long ago, before your mind could remember.” - Luis Lizama
Nights will come and go, where you will find yourself on the verge of giving up and throwing away everything you have accomplished or built through hours of dedication. It is at this time, when we as humans must reflect. We must look back and think of the reason why we began creating this path. A leader must be strong, because much more will be affected than himself. A weak leader, is much more detrimental to the individuals in the group, than to the leader himself. A weak leader will be the downfall of all that they oversee. The consequences are not bound to the leader, but widespread that reaches out to all. As a leader, keeping this in mind is important. For one, it’ll be a barrier to derailing from the path, which the leader have set upon himself. Most importantly, it’ll help the leader make decisions that can help the group in the long run. Reflection is a very powerful tool. Remembering that promise you had always made to your mother, while she was alive. That promise, that memory, can be fuel for growth and perseverance. It may be the very last thing that keeps you going. That is why remembering the reasons why you started is detrimentally important to remember.
Competitions will ultimately get unbearable. It will seems as if the opponent has the upper hand in every move and decision they make. The difference is, who will outlast the other and who will push forward in the grains of salt, where the other will give up. It will ultimately come down to who had the better reason to start and who has more to lose in the end.
Inspiring others
" We shed our skin, broke our teeth, dismantled our hearts, and crippled our minds. But we continued the fight, many had died before being killed, We continued to live after we died. Those who witnessed became our disciples. Our death inspired many to fight, and that is why we lived after we had died." -Luis Lizama
You will learn to possess a towering sense of honor. With every stride you leave behind memories of your ethics, that a child will pick up, and he too will follow your footsteps. Remember the fact, the mere fact that, you will ultimately shape the lives of those before you. You must act accordingly. Inspire and lead in a way and direction, that only your imagination can conceive. Be creative. The sum of your thoughts and emotions are all represented by your actions. Actions speak louder than words.
Dwell in the darkness of hardship, breath it in long enough for when the day arises, when you emerge, you will miss it. Those who witness it, they will be amazed by it. Plan a magnificent plan. Nourish that plan and polish it during every available second. Make that plan a dream, an idea. Take up that idea. Make that one idea your life — think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. That idea will extend to others, and they too will help you build and construct magnificent things. Pace yourself, remember that you are human, and not machine. Probably one of the biggest challenges that individuals face today is the fact that they can not balance their lives. Work hard like there is no tomorrow, but know your limit. You are human. So that brings up a question. To run or to Walk? Crawl or swim? Some learn to run through mountains, some learn to walk continents, some learn to crawl up mountains. Some swim oceans. Bring those along for the ride, it is what leaders do. They lead by example may it be from the front or helping those in the back. Leadership is all about the days where you will be miserable, but yet strong for others. Start counting only when it hurts. Count not the days, but the seconds of pain. Make that your goal, and everyday burn that barrier. Burn it so deep that people will be amazed when you are so far ahead. Look back, smile, and keep on moving forward. They, the followers, will get lost in your triumph, and will follow the path you have set for them. I was determined to show the world who I was. I didn't know who was ready. Was it me or the world? She sat there that day, wondering where I was. She waited and pleaded for my safety. The genuine love she had for me was unique and beautiful, and I had forsaken it for the lust of the night. She was worried; she was old and fragile. I was determined to show my mother that I had finally came home. For on that night, when she had passed, she had not seen her son, her disappointment, come home on that lonely night.
Luis Lizama, Project Onasi
