If It Was About Love, I Would Have Understood You
Learn to grow your self-image even when your self-knowledge includes the specifics of someone else’s identity.
What did I deny you, Olympia?
- If you will obstinately stop me from singing in front of your friends, or forbid me to appear on the stage of any theater – for I am not, thank God, under your tutelage – I will engage without your signature. Do you think, somehow, that I did not guess that you are the one who secretly prevented my employment at the Italian theater? Do you think I’m so naive as to imagine that a theater can reject a singer like me, who offers herself for nothing? How much will this cost? I think quite a lot, don’t you? At least give this satisfaction to my own love, by confessing that, in order to prevent me from singing, you have spent more than you should have to enable another to assert herself.
An imperceptible smile appeared on Lord Drummond’s lips.
- Confess, then, continued Olympia. Why did I come to Paris for then? Concerts, for me, cannot replace theater, passion, art, life ! Even at the Duchesse de Berry’s costume ball, where you were so kind as to let me appear in disguise, I felt that it was not the theatre. So, I repeat, you have to come to terms with the situation, I don’t like to submit to your fantasies. You are noble and rich, you have whims. It is your pleasure to have a singer who exists only for you, who sings only for you. If it was about love, I would have understood you. But you don’t love me, thank God ! You never made any statement to me. And if you had done it to me, you wouldn’t have been here with me today. The woman, and this is what I first liked about you, does not exist for you. You only know the singer. You are not jealous of my face, my person, me. You often torment me by forcing me to dine with your friends, on the condition that I do not sing.
I have heard stories about some millionaires who had the enormous egotism of renting out all the seats in a performance hall in one evening, for the pleasure of reserving their performance just for them. As far as you are concerned, your selfishness is even more terrible: not just one performance, but all the performances you would like to belong to you. You confiscate me. But for this, you need my consent, and I withdraw it. *
Is the way you feel about yourself due to the life experience that begins with the intensity of emotion that someone conveys to you in a circumstance beyond your will?
The way a person feels about himself, turning the moment into an even more memorable one, is actually due to the life experience that begins with the intensity of the emotion that someone conveys to you in a circumstance beyond your will. So, let’s take into account what the moment of feeling conveys, when your will is rather the fulfillment of someone else’s will, transforming the relationship between memorable and subtle into a game of influence whose stake is humiliation, loss of credibility, shame, defamation.
What strikes us more is not so much the sovereign irony of fate that we must respect if we do not want to go through much harder times, but the painful faculty of capturing beyond the visible appearances of people their hidden being. This is where that peace with yourself can begin, regardless of the pressure that others exert on you, as a realization of the experience of not being recognized by others as weak. Or the intensity of the emotion you show towards the individual events of an experience that tasted of moral defeat, must be managed in such a way that your merits, value and good deeds are recognized.
The true wisdom you learn is not a sprint at the end of life, but a marathon of a life whose stake is not first place, but the fact of enduring to the end without selling your soul. And if you open your soul too much, high expectations may betray your heart. And, as a result, those who remain closed, those who wither and self-destruct are precisely those whose emotional experiences are not recognized. The intensity of the emotion with which you treat good news or an unexpected situation depends on the circumstance that can shatter your opportunities to be good, to be generous, to be evaluated at your true worth.
If you want to learn something new about leadership, then learn to grow your self-image even when your self-knowledge encompasses the specifics of someone else’s identity. In other words, the specifics of other people’s identity (including their character, attitude, mentality) will become a part of you as soon as you give them the slightest support. No one can defend himself from the influence of others, but what you can do is fight not to cripple your soul. So, don’t open your soul to anyone !
In leadership, the “measured emotion” of a certain way of being in the world is cultivated. We are talking here about the emotion you expect to lead to influence other people, without making yourself a sounding board for their sad stories.
If It Was About Love, I Would Have Understood You. But many times, in life it is not about love, but about a kind of interest without appreciation that does not widen the sphere of truth on which actionable steps can be built on an individual level. That’s what a wise soul does: don’t set your expectations too high, because most people won’t achieve greatness. And what makes a man wiser is not to tie his soul to the present, but also not to make his conscience a deep passion.
