The Sands Of Time
Devote your life to the sublime, for your leadership to come to life and withstand time.
I need to tell you again about an interesting scene from the movie "Price of Persia (2010)". Dastan, Prince of Persia, together with Tamina, Princess of Alamut, reach the Hourglass Chamber, buried deep in the Earth. They had to stop by all means Nizam, the brother of the deceased Persian king, Sharaman, to turn back time.
Nizam and Dastan violently fight and, because of the earthquake that occurred and of the sand that crumbled, Dastan slips on the rocks, but he manages to catch one edge of it. Meanwhile, Tamina encounters with Nizam and makes one last attempt to convince him to give up his diabolical plan. Instead, Nizam, who couldn't get out of his head his lifetime obsession – to become the most powerful man in Persia, catches her from her shoulders and throws her in the abysm that opened around them.
Leadership: Can you take the risk of total loss, knowing that the stage is only the passing setting of a character who gives value to the world?
Dastan manages to catch Tamina by her hand. He felt deep inside his heart that he could only live through her. Looking in his eyes with a heartbreaking tenderness, utterly pained because she felt her end near and understanding the storm that was shaking her lover's heart, tells him the last words before letting go of his hand:
- Dastan, stop Nizam. If the glass breaks, the world will die with it ! I love you !
Every one of her words pierced Dastan's heart. Her eyes expressed something sweet: it was the love she felt for him and her desire for life.
- No ! Dastan cried, watching her beloved crashing into the deep abysm. The strong suffering, sprung from the depths of his heart, increased his strength and desire of presenting Nizam to fulfill his plan. With his heart clenched of pain and full of rage, he gathered all his courage and strength, climbed back the rock and rushed to Nizam.
Finally, Dastan managed to turn back time, to defeat Nizam and bring Tamina back to life, proving his supreme love for her.
Are your character traits in alignment with the growing importance you place on confronting your own limits, as a way of giving meaning to a time that would otherwise remain empty?
Fighting with your own limits can have a meaning of time management depending on how you relate to the great challenge of living and assimilating your existence as much as possible or, why not, lose it. Time can be perceived as a wall that bounces in front of you or as a continuation of a book which should be read several times to grasp all its nuances.
When we talk about leadership, we do not strictly refer to the art of getting ahead, but we also refer to a reality based on effects – which are exclusively for noble purposes, do not remain in the shadows and become unidentifiable. Leadership, in whose composition is found the fine sand of true values, shouldn’t present a strong degree of wear if regularly polished with thick layers of faith.
This ability to achieve good through the consciousness of supreme sacrifice, stands in front of all available resources for the completion in time of the edifice he built his qualities on. An empty time is the result of a meaningless life that does not singularize the reading of a book told by extraordinary people.
Can you constitute yourself as a reality that contains all time and space itself, or as an escape from a reality that compels you to endure the major test of your story?
It is assumed that the means of raising the edifice of leadership always reabsorb in the achieved goal. The barriers that draw boundaries for all those individuals that might at some point work great, acting on instinctive impulses, can be overcome only with the agreement of clean conscience.
This consciousness determines their manifestation, giving rise to a new form of "being", the sum of those traits of character corresponding to the rising force of significance that they give to the battle with their own limits. Meaning when they feel the need to prove their ownership to someone or something, risking their own freedom and life.
But, especially, they must employ a larger dose of thoughtfulness and confidence in strengthening the foundations of the building not to collapse before finished. Therefore, their own judgments, stemming from a perspective that shines like a torch in the immense darkness of the present, must be permanently maintained to high levels. The proper understanding of the present can lead to a better assessment of the past, but also to a different view of the future.
The major test of Dastan’s story was not the overriding requirement of consciousness of being guided far beyond its present limits, but by the opening of consciousness of not being affected by emotions in the radical way in which this happens in a usual brain.
Do you attribute wrong values to aspects of the external world when evaluating your capabilities, ignoring the limits imposed by time and your mortal condition?
Everything that surrounds you and limits you and doesn’t in any way allow you to move forward, depends on compromise values underlying the experience of living in a parallel reality, accessing the reversibility of time.
When you try to fight everything that is bad, when the dearest person next to you leaves, when you fall and you think you cannot get up, you become the prisoner of an upside-down world: death is intense, familiar, close, while life is increasingly alien.
The mortal condition sets in at that moment when you think life is useless. Thus, you start assigning the wrong values to the many aspects of the external world, such as maximizing the negative effects on the relationship between people and their attempts, constantly refreshing the truth that no one lives forever.
Your ability to build a better present and future, to make your life more beautiful and to produce a significant change in the world, begins to collapse and have "limitations" to the fullness of simple and fleeting pleasures.
Leadership is not an eternal, unshakable edifice, which you can add stone over stone of glory, but it is rather a living organism that evolves passing through several stages. And just as the sand of time unceasingly flows in the hourglass of life - so can you, as a leader, continually increase your personal value, by imposing your vision and by initiating a leadership based on moral values and principles well established, such as solidarity and cohesion.
The desire to break out of the constraint of time accompanies the human being throughout life and becomes the stage on which faith is articulated and great deeds are confirmed.
Leadership can be built on a solid foundation, on empathy, on true friendship, on mutual understanding and affection between individuals, on feelings of deep appreciation and gratitude. Or it can tear down and turn into a heap of sand if you use it arbitrary, without keeping in mind its limits, the golden principles that, as a leader, you must follow. Principles such as "don't use your power in the wrong way in order to meet your personal pride."
If you are a fanatic follower of the philosophy "Everybody must bow before me", then you won't be able to control people's high expectations, and therefore you will fail.
The remarkable secret of a successful leader consist in creating a warm harmony between what he feels, what he thinks and the way he acts. Just as love shows the harmony between two beings that complete themselves and get along well especially on an emotional level - so your leadership shows the degree of closeness to other people and can rise to the highest degree of perfection if you develop the abilities to understand their sufferings, motivations and aspirations.
The timeline dedicated to inner ascent is nothing more than the imprint of a life lived with meaning, where every accumulated experience refuses to be wasted in futility.
The Sands of Time represents a metaphorical way to convey an indisputable truth: everything changes, including leadership, which can rise to the challenge only in time, as it develops, or it can crumble like a castle of sand if it hasn't got a stable foundation and a suitable binder.
Take a stand in front of time if you want the value of your leadership to grow. Devote your life to the sublime, for your leadership to come alive and last in time. Establish yourself some ideals and values that are not contrary to professional ethics and integrity. Devote your life to the development of a new vision, of a new way of painting a leadership, based on unity, stability, truth, empathy and trust.
Gather all your courage and all the power of your heart in order to show your appreciation and attachment to those around you, and thus your leadership will come to life and last in time.
