Rice is ripe and the fields on fire

It's been a year since I started to explore faith and Christianity in particular for myself. I dared put together some rather crazy ideas and when I confronted Alastair with them some serious question marks cropped up. Alastair however suggested I read Provocations by Soren Kierkegaard.

I've started just now, on the way to Alor Setar, a journey much dreaded as Alor Setar for me is still a mixture of joy of being with the kids there and depression of being alone and having to sleep overnight in the office.

Alastair is undoubtedly a great leader because the first thing that struck my eyes was this thought:

Early in his life, Kierkegaard made the discovery that one must “find a truth which is true for me – the idea for which I can live and die.”

Provocations, Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, Compiled and Edited by Thomas Moore

I remember my university professor, whose field is system theory, saying that there is no objective or universal truth. He was right. Our lives are all so unique that no matter how much we learn from others, unless we struggle to apply it to our individual conditions, it is to little avail.

This must be a particularly great discovery for all would-be leaders as it teaches to respect more others and their individual conditions. Now I better understand why Scott M. Peck said that leaders should encourage other people to choose paths they would never choose for themselves.

Absolutely, it is not about convincing others of our truth but rather encouraging them to seek their own. How?

By being more humble and less narcissistic?

What Really Matters

There is often more wisdom to be found at the edges of life than in its middle. A life-threatening illness, for instance, may shuffle our values like a deck of cards. Sometimes a card that has been on the bottom of the deck for most of our lives turns out to be the top card, the thing that really matters. Having watched people sort their cards and play their hands in the presence of death for many years, I would say that most often the top card is love.

-- Rachel Naomi Remen

2nd half

With the beginning of 2005, the second half of my current job is just about to begin and I'm asking myself how I can get more out of it. Undoubtedly, there are both personal and professional matters to work on and improve.

Speaking about the latter, I think I should take on a formal leadership role. There are hints this may be necessary to take place very soon and this time I won't resist like I did before. I'd refused it out of fear of breaking equality with the other teachers and becoming unpopular. However, I should accept it now precisely because I'm able and willing, too, to think of the school as a whole. I can see the organisation and the underlying system and it is certainly not asking me to be popular.

One thing which helped convince me is a past meeting experience. One of the teachers was arguing for more regular meetings only to discuss in a rather self-centred manner relatively minor issues to do with office supplies. After that I started to talk about overall performance and quality issues in line with long-term planning. This debate took up about an hour but didn't get much interest from that teacher. The striking gap between the level on which we perceive the organisation can now be justifiably reflected into our organizational structure.