Enter the Dark Night

(Part 2: Lead Yourself First!)

KIDS ARE TOO DAMNED HONEST

“Why should we go to his game; he ain’t gon’ play.” DAYUUUUUUUM Sis! These were the words of a friend of the family, probably about 12 or 13 years-old at the time. I was fuming at that little kid and all she was doing was speaking the truth as she saw it. There was more to my playing time woes than she understood but the facts she spit were indisputable. I sat on the bench the first two years that I played college basketball at Chapman University and I remember how embarrassed I was that kids didn’t even want to come support me because I was a benchwarmer. I felt like a fraud.

I came to lead self first, in part, because of bouts like that where true self collides with false self. There are always context, correlations and key factors that explain your story more fully. I knew this as 17-19 year-old college athlete. But the world moves too fast for you to beat critics, enemies, spectators and family friends to the public narrative.

LE (CONTROL) FREAK C’EST CHIC

In America, the desire to control is elegantly fashionable. Maybe it’s not an American thing. As the world turns, we must lead self because leadership of others depends too much on relationships you do not have time to create with strangers or the estranged. I want so badly to control the belief of others and make them my fans. I truly think my pros outweigh my cons. Despite the negative connotations, I’m sure I am still religious, bound to what is reverent and sacred. But better men and women than me failed majorly in scripture and history. And even when they or I don’t fail, at any minute someone can beat you to the public to tell them you did.

Consider how the formative years, pre-teen-to-adolescence and into young adulthood are either a time of self-serving hedonism, a quest for moral perfection (by religious folk) or a Pavlovian pursuit of success however society defines it. It was the third that opened my eyes to leadership of self. I was plenty churched but familiar with hypocrisy as clergy leaders sometimes lied and men evaded emotions other than anger and lust. So I determined to be anything but the non-examples – the bad men.

In college, I pulled-up to the party for about 15 minutes thinking I’d just show my face and “bounce”(leave). But my friend’s girlfriend wanted to prove she could drink 40 ounces of Malt Liquor in front of a bunch of horny athletes. So I took her car keys from her and forced her to walk home so she didn’t get raped or killed in her own car. I commonly tried to play the hero back then, then went to the gym to workout for that team that wasn’t allowing me to see the light of day. Nevertheless, I felt purposed and secure in my anti-septic lifestyle despite the real fact that I really just wanted to be good at basketball.

Let Go and Lead Self First

It’s hard to have a Dark Night of the Soul experience when you’re saving girls who don’t want saving. I was ready to fight “F-boys” for preying on women but I wasn’t leading self. I was avoiding being a bad guy and thus not living from true self. I couldn’t see my illusions, my fears and my addiction to attempting to control the levels of decency in my space. Please…I’ve learned that I can’t even always control my own decency or that of those sworn to love me. But that’s a different blog post “fr” (for real). Leading self acknowledges this profound statement:

In real-life, I meet my true self via the Dark Night of the Soul., the upheaval of life that works to rid me of my illusions about people. Real life has come to me in the form of strange jobs, layoffs, death, arguments with God, critique of my country and community, divorce, parenting, uncomfortable emotions & expressions and defamation of my character from more sources than I can name. Nothing was as I once thought it was. Tangible rewards do not necessarily follow hard work. People’s memories of whatever good you’ve done often vanish in the tumult of politics and social confusion. Yet, my mistakes and the darkness of loss followed by gracious redemption serve as pure agents. They move me toward a leadership of self that releases the truest, most loving version of myself to my family and my future.