Living Rationally - Living Relevantly

Leaders are rational.

As a created leader you have the intellectual capacity to discover, perceive, understand, and relate to the world in meaningful and intentional ways. You exercise sound judgment and common sense in implementing informed and practical solutions to life’s challenges.

Oh what a fairy tale! From brewery worker – to stagehand – to dramatist – to prominent playwright – to essayist – to political dissident – to welder in a communist prison – then – president of Czechoslovakia! By his own admission Vaclav Havel was catapulted overnight into a world of fairy tales. His political foes said he was “not a normal man.” In spite of the adamant claims of his adversaries, Havel insisted that he was just a normal person. History tells the story: Vaclav Havel was the revitalizing intellectual figure and moral force that brought about the collapse of communism in Czechoslovakia and throughout Eastern Europe.

Vaclav was correct. His life was a fairy tale. Regardless of how others viewed him (elitist, intellectual, enemy of the state, not normal, subversive, bourgeois, or disloyal), Vaclav always viewed himself as nothing more, or less, than an ordinary person, simply living normally, and attempting to do his work well.

But how was this possible? The circumstances of his life were undeserved, wearisome, often discouraging. What quality, what character trait, enabled Havel to cope with maddening circumstances and change the course of his life and world history?

Havel possessed the God-given ability to rationally and logically relate to the world about him. Though the circumstances in his life were often aberrant and perplexing, Vaclav was able to sort through and interpret those conditions, though bizarre at times, and generate new ideas and insights regarding these events. Then, based upon insightful and logical analysis, he formulated and implemented strategies that changed the circumstances of his life and the lives of those around him.

You, too, were created rational.

This created leadership attribute is not given to a select few, like Vaclav Havel. It is not given only to those with a good bloodline or those who had the good fortune of growing up in a good neighborhood. This is an attribute of God – given by Him to every single person – given to you. Like Havel, you are endowed with the capacity to discover, perceive, understand, and intellectually relate to your world – though confusing, even maddening at times – in meaningful and purposeful ways. You possess the ability to exercise sound judgment and common sense, implementing informed and practical solutions to each one of life’s challenges.

Living rationally is to live relevantly – to live purposefully. You possess the inherent capacity to be rational in each circumstance of your life. It is fundamental to all men and women. Therefore, it is an attribute that you must rediscover and cultivate.

As Vaclav Havel put it, living rationally is “living the truth.”

Now go out and lead!