The Burning Ecstasy Of The Solitary Man

Constantly reassess your values and beliefs so as to prevent externalizing your predominantly negative inner states.

Everyone knows what diamond is, a piece of coal processed by heat and time – in millions of years. But it might as well be the result of exceeding your own limits or, conversely, a small core of old-fashioned personal vanity, an undeclared attachment of Ego shattered by the bitterness of life, an Ego that evolves to extreme agitation.

"You’d be surprised how long it takes to give 100 million pounds. It took me 40 years to do that. Today I gave the last penny… Except for this jewelry you held in your hand. A diamond, an extraordinary piece, 168 carats, 58 sides, very rare. I stole it from the company where I worked. I’ve kept it for rainy days… Or maybe… Maybe it’s the last bit of vanity I have left."

This passion for experimentation, willingness to suspend any balance – moral and spiritual, draws Laura Quinn near a burning state, a boisterous ecstasy. An unknown, active and purifying emotion, intense during intimate moments, like an aggressive force of attraction that leads to breaking the crystal itself, the great touchstone of one’s values into more and more disparate and insignificant fragments.

Although productive and insightful, everything inside it slowly and surely grinds, changes into a sad and introvert person, despite its high aspirations.

Are you climbing on the heights of repentance, or descending to the chasms of vanity amid the attempt to surpass yourself that turns experiencing long-lasting suffering into a greater understanding of life experiences?

If Beethoven complained of his deafness, Byron, of his short leg, Rousseau, of his bladder infection, Laura Quinn experiences as if purposely, excitingly and stimulating the very special feelings of her disorder. She does not look hard to heal, like a patient fighting against his illness, but more like a patient who ignores his illness, like a paralytic who comforts with this implausible, yet true idea: acceptance of pain.

As an unmerited gift of destiny, Laura Quinn accepts with endless zeal her illness. A vice that, excessive and silent, haunts and degrades her more and more as human. Vanity ! She does not attempt by repentance to uncover the problem of her own nature, her bold and unyielding passions, such as ambition, avarice, greed, but rather cares for the meaning such a recuperating act has: the exaggerated belief in her own abilities pointed towards what she possesses, not towards what she offers.

What is the result of exceeding your own limits? Between the present and the future of leadership, does it slowly weave that undeclared attachment of an Ego shook by the bitterness of life? Does everything inside you grinds slowly, but surely? Do you comfort yourself with the implausible, yet true idea of self-acceptance in relation to a sense of disappointment? Does an excessive flaw haunts and degrades you more and more as human being?

What is the importance of integrating your life experiences into a type of defensive personal attitude that implies that you are very self-satisfied against any practices associated with an increased level of guilt?

To win the big competition with ourselves on the way to performance and fullness, we must be aware of what this mobilizing, but expensive energy represents, often performing a questionable, deceptive, intriguing function, that cannot be defined by chemical formulas and neither directly measured. The presence of an unexplained force becomes increasingly threatening, imprinting or applying leadership, through various forms, another trajectory, curvilinear or descendant.

And how can this energy be obtained and used in a free, but poor and marginal way, but by a totally unexpected reversal of inner poles. By shaking the Ego. By combining inner conflicts, emotions awakened by a custom ring, from which arises a new experience, a false, but well-rounded image of a rather isolated man, distracted by the absurdity of that moment, preceding the thunderbolt of emptiness.

The result is, undoubtedly, poor. Sometimes, in extreme cases, violent or brutal, negatively influencing attitude, the way we look those around us, the way we spend our inner resources, our feelings, emotions and convictions, values. The most common reaction is the loss of one’s own personality, sometimes irreparable, the exclusion of those coordinates of human development, specific to leadership.

Only you decide how much you let yourself be driven by this energy. Being aware of this energy, negative in its essence, means being in constant connection with yourself, with the entire range of values, with your entire being, with who you really are. This makes your personality an extension of the capacity to regain your composure and, also, making leadership a legitimacy of the power of "being".

The main point which characterizes the personality of the leader is the “torment” of going through all the extreme stages of life without losing in any one of them.

The Belgian writer Marguerite Yourcenar wrote: "I often think that people are characterized by an extreme position, their heroism consisting in remaining there throughout their life."

What do you chose? To fall, to live and to suffer in the precipice of vanity and despair? Or to get up atop of repentance and betterment?

This moment, the duality between darkness and light, between "to be" and "not to be" an orderly man, is given by the great confrontation: losing or winning your own being. The law of physics are equivalent to human laws. The force exerted by one body to another, a series of feelings to other feelings, is a complex process that leads to the formation of the laws of your existence. As a result, you tend to get stuck, maybe even for a lifetime, in an extreme position, in one point that becomes fixed, a heavy burden, awry distributed in its own existence.

It is the fight against your "disease", on the front of your unmanageable emotions and beliefs, formed in time, giving you the right to place yourself sometimes sideways towards the dominant mainstream in leadership or in your personal and social life, strengthening or destabilizing your feelings and your attachment to the present and the future.

A strong mind, a strong character, a noble soul give just a little lift, a small step forward, but not a decisive one, does not represent something safe, which takes a dramatic and happy turn. It is only a small segment of the complex chain of change. If the road initially selected is no more according to current expectations, then things may take a turn to restriction or, worse, depression.

The higher your aspirations, the more life will make you slip; you will always lead a life in the middle line. If you want to develop your leadership, first give meaning to your life: constantly reassess your values and beliefs so as to prevent externalizing your predominantly negative inner states.

Do not linger in any one of the extreme positions you are going through life. Listen to your heart and remorse, they will show you the path you need to take.

Vanity means not destroying the last thing you have left, that is, the memory of what you once were.

The Burning Ecstasy Of The Solitary Man marks the moment of transition to the final stage of your journey: a free and painful fall in the precipice of vanity and despair, or a climb atop repentance and betterment. What do you chose?

Just as a painter does not see color only as an ornament, but refers to an expression of the model’s emotions, so the choice you make towards achieving fullness should not be regarded as a simple act, but as a necessary expense, an investment to face time.

Show who you really are !

* Note: Flawless (2007)