Neculai Fantanaru
Everything Depends On The Leader
Everything Depends On The Leader
I sit on a chair in the airport and wait. It is just a banal, monotonous, bordered seat, among other free seats that nevertheless have a specific purpose: to provide comfort to all the passengers who are about to board the plane. Indeed, it was already an abandoned chair when I saw it, radiating a kind of bitter sadness and loneliness, the eyes of passers-by perceiving it as an impersonal space, a borderline thing, devoid of historicity.
Without ideas, impassive, undisturbed by anything, the chair does not seem at all affected by the perceptions of foreign eyes in the situation of “no reaction” in which it finds itself. He simply waits for events to unfold at their own pace.
Am I missing something? Because this chair, a perfect fusion of art and science, my poor airport friend, isn’t so naive as to think I can manipulate time in his favor to keep the seat warm for the next arrival. He feels that I must leave in just a few minutes, and then… then he will be cold, uncaring, apathetic again. Wherever I go, I will remember this chair – this is so that there are no interpretations for the simple situation in which I find myself, because whatever option I choose, I am found in order by reference to a single unit of measurement: the need to feel big in the face of small things.
They all went around this chair, passed by it without giving it due attention, being disinterested in the theme of vision, unconcerned with rendering the visible, the tangible and the defined at the level of experience or emotion, therefore not being able to see it as an artist does: through a kaleidoscope of colors, thoughts, emotions, themes or new possibilities of expression. Is it true that no one’s seen this chair? Was anyone aware of its presence? And if any passer-by saw it, besides me, how could they have immortalized it in an image accessible only through the soul?
The things no one sees are the things in plain sight, right around you. Alas, and there are so many things in one room – most of them overlooked, as many as there are empty seats in this airport right now. But, it is in vain that you have eyes to see if you do not know how to see things with an artist’s eye, and also in vain if your vision does not fall within the field of interpretation of the image that urges you (as a viewer) to extend your visual perception outside “the painting”.
And I sat in this lonely chair, as a painter sits in front of his easel, with his back straight, his eyes turned away from the light source, and I practiced my gaze from assembling the qualities of this authentic vintage object, such as: stability, comfort, flexibility and functionality.
Do you agree with me? I would say that the artist’s vision requires that quality of the eyes to focus on close objects as if they were some “shadow” characters that work perfectly only in a rare series of books, by reference to an Alphisinous Escheronaria , an absolute hidden in an “invisible reality”. This, therefore, is what the chair really thinks of me, pointing out that I have confessed nothing to it of my suspicions of its lordship:
- Oh, it’s a dream, it says to itself bitterly, looking at the floor without me paying attention to its gaze, while it murmured: he would be a legendary explorer or an ancient nobleman with a passion for art, a honorable man, no less !
I don’t even deny it, I am as it thinks I am. And, in the end, the chair kept me company for whole minutes, it smiled together, it caressed my reality with that touch of warmth that the soul appreciates much more than the mind, but it didn’t say a word. An overwhelming feeling seemed to spring from the feeling of its presence, relational to the idea of robustness, with the ability to render the expressiveness of a carefully elaborated design profile.
Not even if you are a laureate in mathematics, not even if you have three doctorates in the philosophy of science, not even if you benefit from the title of doctor, your sight would still not have been interested in the fascination of this object which, at a moment like this, seemed to want to win the battle against time. As if it were locked in a symbolic world, in an approach to artistic reality, in an impersonal space, where all that matters is obtaining a static image (an optical image or a graphic image) that needs a panorama to produce an idea, an aesthetic phenomenon, an effect greater than the sum of the effects, in a fixed frame.
Obviously, the chair carries the meanings of an overwhelming feeling stemming from feeling the presence of a painter who values that thing capable of giving it a unique, authentic image. Here, the artistic space expands with the help of a “conceptual” look towards a dilated image of the real, spilling unhindered as in a cubist painting towards the remarkable and fresh perspectives of things that I would otherwise have considered uninteresting. I still feel that I am under the impression of a new universe that is constantly expanding using the patterns of a structural association between the separate fragments of phenomena, subtle nuances, reflections, shadows, undefined emotions, all under the cover of a subjective exploration of places, facts, processes and defining concepts.
The chair quickly weighed my body weight, took my pulse, felt the vibration of my soul and did not look at me suspiciously at all, realizing that it was repeating something absolutely ridiculous: the feeling of being exposed to the same Visus Supra Imaginationem (sight beyond imagination), in such a way that it must not be significantly influenced by the power of accommodation of my eye to its reality, so that through my eyes it maintains its status as a personified idea.
Do not forget that everything around you is a reflection of your inner world. Look, right now, pick one thing around you that you haven’t paid any attention to. What exactly can it say about you? What can you say about it so that it becomes a reflection of your soul?
Clear Vision Obeys Only The Eyes That Know How To See, and I say this thinking that what I saw at an abandoned seat in the airport, enlivened only by the mirage of an image that can become a memory, beyond what the normal gaze would have accepted as suggestion for the projection of a realistic artistic image, actually represents the exploration of an unknown world, but close to the horizon of my own understanding.
Somehow, my presence there in the airport, enlivening everything around me, could have gone further than that: this chair was as pleasant as it could be at such moments when waiting became more and more comfortable, making me feel like a “decor influencer” who knows how to mix the surrounding elements in such a way as to obtain a special image.
Why read this book? Because it is critical to optimizing your performance. Because it reveals the main coordinates after that are build the character and skills of the leaders, highlighting what it is important for them to increase their influence.
The essential characteristic of this book in comparison with others on the market in the same domain is that it describes through examples the ideal competences of a leader. I never claimed that it's easy to become a good leader, but if people will...
For some leaders, "leading" resembles more to a chess game, a game of cleverness and perspicacity; for others it means a game of chance, a game they think they can win every time risking and betting everything on a single card.
I wrote this book that conjoins in a simple way personal development with leadership, just like a puzzle, where you have to match all the given pieces in order to recompose the general image.
The aim of this book is to offer you information through concrete examples and to show you how to obtain the capacity to make others see things from the same angle as you.
Without considering it a concord, the book is representing the try of an ordinary man - the author - who through simple words, facts and usual examples instills to the ordinary man courage and optimism in his own quest to be his own master and who knows... maybe even a leader.
