The other day I said that sometimes I’ll say to myself: “I don’t know…and I don’t need to know,” and then my body relaxes. While it’s true that I do that sometimes, I think more often than not I get stuck in the “I don’t know…and I need to know.” In these cases, if I can’t figure it out, I want someone who can, or seems to be able to do so.
I just finished talking with a friend about an organization to which we belong. One of the things that frustrates me the most about the organization is that I feel uncertain on which direction it wants to go. I feel confident that some people one to go one way, others want to go another way, and I want to go yet a third way. I try to sit with the uncertainty and hope that the people leading the organization will choose a common path and go in one direction, and when I don’t see that happening, I try to jump into the leadership position.
It’s not that I love being the leader—actually, many times I would much prefer not to be—it’s just that I feel so frustrated when the leader doesn’t lead in a clear direction. I can remember when I worked at a co-working space helping to organize events. I didn’t want to lead at all—I just wanted the organizer to tell me where to put the chairs and tables. When certain organizers would come up to me and say, “Jim, put the chairs and tables wherever you think is good,” I would often get annoyed, because I didn’t want to have to make those decisions—I just wanted to be the muscles for someone else’s brain.
I can see this happening in quarantine right now and how frustrated I have been with political leadership in this country. I, like many others, have been feeling a lot of uncertainty over what will happen in terms of our health, jobs, economy, travel restrictions, and more. I keep trying my best to breathe into it, tell myself that I don’t need to know, and control what’s within my control. And yet I still want someone to have more clarity and show it to me, so that I don’t have to do so much internal processing.
So, again, when this happens, a part of me almost wants to jump up and take the wheel, steering the ship in a clear direction. It’s not that I want to lead so much, it’s that I want someone to lead and believe that no one is, or maybe that I don’t feel confident in their ability to lead.
I sometimes hesitate to talk about this because I think for much of my life people have said (or I’ve said to myself) that I’m too young or too inexperienced to be the leader of a group; that wanting to be the leader means that I’m just too entitled, that I need to work up the ranks and wait my turn.
I just happen to think that I can be good at the skills of telling the overall narrative, explaining confusing topics, and showing confidence in a clear path for a group to go. Sometimes. Not always, but when I do, and I see that lack, I believe I want to be in that position.
I like leading but I also like when others lead…when they do it well.
