Good leadership, like good love-- for leadership is worked out through love-- is all about the small. We are often told as seniors (especially in the musical) that we should befriend the underclassmen, yadda yadda; when we graduate we should leave behind a negative of ourselves, imprinted on the lives of those we've served. This really doesn't seem so bad-- some of my favorite people are underclassmen! But... good leadership, and mentorship, worked out through sacrificial love (for that is the only kind of real love, is it not?), does not mean befriending the witty ones, the bubbly ones, the cute sophomore guys-- although it is important, of course, to befriend to these people, and under no circumstances am i insinuating that it is wrong or unethical to befriend people who you genuinely like, who make your insides form a happy reveille; but in the end, they are not the ones that need us. The nourishment-ratio between us and them is generally equal. But the others, ahh, they are the difficult ones!
Good leadership, loving leadership, means ministering to the untouchables. It means seeking out the silent awkward ones who stick to the back of the stage, who sit by themselves at the cast meetings; in short, the un-cool ones. They are the ones that need us! We the "big kids" tend to impact their lives in wild and sometimes accidental ways. And I'm definately not just making this up, because I was there! I was that quiet and terrified sophomore at the Pricipals Rehearsals, thrown so very far from my comfort zone, that was impacted in occasionally wonderful ways by kind and genuinely loving seniors. So, we should focus our energies into making our impact a good one. So why is that so hard?
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