Good leaders lead. Great leaders love.

In my daydreams I think about what comes after grad school. I fantasize about starting a company — the sort that changes the world for the better through the efforts of amazing creative people acting with shared purpose. I am not in graduate school to land a fancy degree; the degree is incidental. The plan all along has been to develop certain embryonic ideas in the fertile soil and timeframe that graduate studies afford. The shape and form of this imagined entrepreneurial endeavor gets just a bit clearer as time moves on, as I have opportunity to encounter profound ideas and interact with exceptional people. Of course, only time will tell if these lofty things will come to pass.

The thought of leading such an organization is thrilling (and terrifying). I've seen my fair share of leaders, in the business world and elsewhere. There is certainly something to be said for the essential discipline of leading. Books on the topic abound. Many of them are quite good. But as I have pondered the most remarkable leaders — known to me personally or simply admired from afar — it is their character more than their practice that stands out. They love what they have been charged with accomplishing. Or they love those with whom they work. The greatest among the great do both.

When I say “do both” I mean that little “do” as an action verb. I can easily be infatuated with the idea of my work and with my ideas of who I believe people to be. But it's not love without action, without attention, without investment, without empathy, without risk, without sacrifice. And, so, as I prepare to be the leader I desire to be, and as I watch those around me busy with the privilege and burden of leading, I am now considering it all through the lens of love. What will it take to love my work? What will it take to truly love those with whom I will work? How can I do so in the here and now — not merely in my daydreams? How can I love those leading me? 

In the end, should I be blessed with the opportunity to live out my daydream, I want to lead in such a way that those around me follow not because they must, but because they choose to in response to being loved. If I am successful, though I desire to contribute towards achieving something significant, I hope I will be remembered some day more for how I loved than only what I achieved.

My first fairy tale…

I asked her if she’d like to hear a bedtime story. “Yes,” she said. I hadn’t been entirely serious. “About a sailor. Make it happy.”

And so it was that I wrote my first fairy tale…

UPDATE (July, 2014): After having since written several more short stories, I’ve returned to this one to revise and expand it to read in the style of the others.

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On the Hook

Once upon a time there was a young sailor. Perhaps it would be truer to say that she wanted very much to be a sailor. She lived in a pretty little house on the sea, and she loved her father who happened to be the captain of a big ship. Her father the ship captain was admired by all those who served on his crew.

The little sailor begged and pleaded with her father to sail with him on his adventures. Of course, because she was young and small each time she asked he would simply smile and tell her that maybe some day she could come with him. She was persistent. She grew, and her pleading with her father only grew right along with her. But her father continued to refuse her—always, of course, careful to be as kind as he could be in dashing her hopes.

The little house the ship captain and his daughter called home was built up on a bluff with a clear view of both the water and the sky. While he would not let his daughter sail, the ship captain taught her as much as he could. They both especially loved the night sky. She would ask him to tell her the names of the stars (though she knew them by heart for years), and he would explain charts and how to navigate on the sea using the stars. When her father was at sea, the little sailor would climb down to the inlets and basins below and spend hours at the water’s edge with all the creatures that lived in that other world. Urchins and sponges often starred in the tales she spun.

One night while her father was away, the little sailor found a star in the night sky she had never noticed before. It twinkled a little differently than all the others. She decided it was her very own wishing star and wished upon it that she could go off to sea with her father the ship captain.

Not long after her father returned from his latest voyage, the little sailor pleaded with him once again to sail with him on his next trip. Finally her father relented. The little sailor could join the crew but only if she did all the work that the other crew members were expected to do. The little sailor was ecstatic. She could hardly contain herself and threw herself around her father’s neck in a hug at least twice as big as herself.

And so it was the little sailor went off adventuring at sea. She swabbed decks, trimmed sails, kept night watch in the crow’s nest, and did all the other things on the ship she was asked to do. Her father was very proud of his little sailor.

Days at sea stretched into weeks and then weeks stretched into months. As supplies on the ship naturally dwindled, like always, the crew turned to the waters full of life for their meals. The little sailor was panicked. She thought of all the fish as her friends and remembered all the stories they had told together and could not bear to drop a hook in the sea. She knew that soon it would be her turn to fish for the ship’s supper.

The little sailor asked her father to do anything else onboard the ship other than fish. Her father had been a fisherman for many years before becoming a sea captain. Though he loved her very much, he simply could not understand why she refused to fish. As the ship’s captain he reminded her that she had agreed to do all the work asked of her in order to go out to sea on his ship. She would have to fish. He grew more and more frustrated with her as she continued to refuse to do what the ship needed her to do.

Finally, one night the young sailor’s father did not allow her to eat supper with the rest of the ship. In fact, he told her that if she wanted to eat, she must fish for her supper. He gave her until morning. His voice was a mix of a stern father and the wise old captain the crew had come to respect.

The ship was anchored in shallow clear waters under a bright moon. In its way, the cove reminded the little sailor of her times near the water at home. Our little sailor stood on the deck of the ship with her fishing pole all night. She stared into the night sky and did not know what to do.

The dark of night was fading, and first light peeked from behind the horizon. One by one each of the stars disappeared. Just as the very last star was twinkling its last twinkle, the little sailor suddenly recognized it. She had found her wishing star again. So she wished with all her might for some way to be spared from plucking her friends from the sea.

The little sailor mustered her strength as much as her hope and cast her line high into the sky, not sure what might happen. Magically, instead of falling into the waters around the ship, her hook stuck in the sky itself. It hung there, magically, on the very star she had wished upon. Wide eyed, she did not know what to do, but her father was calling to her. He intended to see what she had caught in the night.

So the little sailor pulled hard just like she did with the rigging on the ship’s giant sails. Just as her father the captain appeared on deck, the star came loose from the sky and fell to earth in a brilliant streak. It landed in a flash of light not far from the wise old sea captain’s ship.

The little sailor and the ship’s captain gasped in wonder. Just below them in the shallow clear water was something like they had never seen. The little sailor’s father never asked his daughter to fish ever again, for they had together beheld a beautiful miracle. And this is how starfish came to be.

On Wonder

I grew up a certifiable know-it-all. I suspect it was not long after I uttered “mama” and “dada” that I discovered the phrase “I know.” I still recall moments of instruction and questioning where the first thing out of my mouth in response was “I know.” I did not know. I had no business saying I did. I once went so far as to declare before a room of people that I intended to know everything. I was serious. And I was fully confident in my ability to do so. I was also, of course, utterly wrong in each of the various meanings of the word wrong.

I suspect that while I developed certain social graces as a young adult in college and would never say as much, I believed myself to be very active in my quest to know everything. It was in these years that I finally started to feel the internal strain of such a compulsion. There were things I did not know. There were things that nobody could know. Perhaps worst of all there were things I was incapable of comprehending for which others had no such difficulty.

It was not long after college that I was granted redemption for all my vain struggling. I can say that it was, in fact, a spiritual experience. All in a moment of clarity bestowed upon me and not formulated by my own faculties, I came to know the transformative beauty of wonder. In this one moment, the arc of my existence was bent in a new direction. I came to see mystery not as a problem to be solved but as a gift to be enjoyed. Now I am not so foolish as to suggest we should forgo knowledge and understanding. Rather, I am saying that where knowledge and understanding are lacking, there is opportunity for wonder to abound in its splendor. I tend to think that God inhabits wonder.