The Harsh Law Of The Elders (I)

Confront the demon within you, without keeping yourself anchored in the illusion of the evolution that he persistently imposes to you.

He was in a perpetual delirium. Among all the illusions that could be born in the brain of this old sheriff from Desert Aire, the most ridiculous was the ambition not to abandon his purpose. A light of immortality, an odyssey of the spirit towered over the relativity and contingency of fatal occurrences that were smacking the banal everyday life.

His name was Ed Tom Bell. The purpose of his life, more and more fierce, more oppressive, more enslaving, became quite clear as the events had acquired proportions: the capture and the arrest of Anton Chigurh, the ruthless assassin, this cursed ghost, a sort of Hector Barbossa, who spread fear in only with the name, and which the darkness hid it very well in the boat of fatality.

However, catching a ghost and untangling the mystery that surrounded it, it was not an easy task for Tom Bell. His thoughts, increasingly haunted by this inhuman form of existence, who appeared and disappeared, always in a different place, feeding itself only with innocent blood, were revolting against his own laws, his harsh law that just hatched from his conscience, and still have not tensed his muscles. When it would be fully approved?

The struggle with the Demon. Tormented by the thought that maintained the flame of his insistence, the sheriff Tom Bell left himself grabbed by the demon of hope and confidence, and threw himself with all the energy into the unknown. A flight towards absolute that always ends in the same way - a new victim, a new victory of the "ghost". And he imagined that would succeed eventually the impossible, to catch it.

Anton Chigurh is always undiscoverable. Tom Bell follows again the demon from him, remains in position, and continues the tracking. Nevertheless, like a cruelty of fate, more and more people are killed, more and more old people. Was it a kind of warning given to his own weakness? Was it the signal of an involution?

Leadership: is your ambition to evolve based on a philosophy centered solely on the idea: "Did I turn the darkness of my life into an impossible mission?"

Are you possessed by the demon of excess? Are you falling into the trap of a false identity? How much should change the events for you to adapt to reality? Are you throwing yourself into the unknown and continue to wander into a reckless race for "ghosts"? Are you facing a self-imposed Alter Ego? Are you following the demon within you, do you continue a chase in vain that distorts your perception about the possibilities of change and over your own role?

An uninspired decision, centered exclusively on the idea, "I turned the darkness of my life into an impossible mission", is to continue to draw new horizons of your ambition even when you are moving in the opposite direction to your evolution. The potential of the form of being constantly in a self-assessment situation and the potential of the form to meet the demands of a consciousness that wants to face the world depends on the facet of self-reliance.

Self-dependency is the reflection of the image of a subjective reality that arises from the conception that the world has been created according to the patterns of destiny, everything relating to time. It is the equivalent of selecting a creed that constantly pulses the challenge of its own ability to cope with the demands of a great role. Therefore, in creating self-dependency, you tend to feed yourself constantly with illusions of self-reliance, self-pacing, and self-promotion, trying to accede where your chances are not favorable.

Leadership is the result of a firm choice that corresponds to a two-stage scenario: first you analyze the reasons why you would fit a major role, then revert back to your normal course. Otherwise you will bear the consequences of your vulnerability in the face of the unforeseen and that of paradoxes.

This option can bring an added value to your basic characteristics, or can activate that part of you, that "demon" - a different kind of Ego that may distort your perception towards reality, and on what you are capable of doing.

A disagreement between "to be" and "not to be" too old for a new experience, can go too far, up to antagonism between reality and illusion. It's a state of degradation of the identity granted to you due to the place, function, roles, and the status that lies to you in the society - but that does not honor leadership.

To have confidence in you is the path towards the ultimate success, and anyone can combine courage, integrity, ability and ambition to change the events by his own example. However, to qualify yourself for the status of a leader, you must avoid the effect of "too busy" over your area of development. The undesirable effect of melting your own relational individuality, whose first reality it is to constantly keep you in check.

I think the following saying refers to the too high expectations of each leader overtaken by his limits: "If you change your position towards the sun, it does not mean that the world spins around you."

Abstain yourself at reaping the rewards of your own demon that requires you stubbornly to be more than your limits allow you.

Abstain yourself in broadening your horizons beyond the border with the balance. Do not change your position towards the highest parts of leadership, the only valid ones, deeply embedded in the human-socio-professional field, and that can be identified and described by a single effort of virtue "to be abstinent from the excess of being in whatever you undertake"

Is it the moment to retire from the professional life? Do you keep trying to adapt yourself to a hostile environment, regardless of the consequences that entails your refusal?

Sheriff Tom Bell is the materialization of a metaphor that can be understood as follows: we are all driven by an invisible force to lay a path full of successes, but that does not mean to be totally in agreement with it.

When you try to pursue your life’s goal and, with it, acquire a new understanding of things, remember that what can break you is the skill of your will to function according to the rules conditioned by events that you cannot prevent from happening.

The harsh law of the elders expresses the following reality the more you get older, even if your will is strong, the yield decreases. And so the lofty goals, towards which you aspire, cannot be accomplished anymore. In this context, you must know when to put the point. And if you want to take it over again, you must choose your appropriate way.

Are you adopting a stereotypical and egocentric behavior, in those circumstances that you cannot control? Are you always staying in the same point, in all the approaches that you carry out, and with all the beliefs that you have?

* Note: "No Country for Old Men (2007)"