We all know what feelings mean. Often we stand by the beach when the sun goes down, or look at the green of the forest in the distance at sunrise, or the beauty of the sky as the stars rise, and then we feel the presence of a force. Once I stood in a mountain in Tibet. In the distance, the solar light seemed to slowly sweep over the cliffs of blue lakes surrounded by ravines. Down below, the meadow was lined with crystal-like rocks, which, on the sidelines of a small stream, with wildflowers at the edges.
Such landscapes and atmosphere make me feel amazingly amazed, which heightens my curiosity to the meaning of our existence, the mystery of who we are, what we live for, and what else we can achieve. I stared at the world far ahead, through the limits of my imagination's horizon, looking as though, when a series of moments I experienced on the roof of the world, nothing was hidden for me.
What I did not know then, the day of the past few years, is that I'm almost experiencing something that will forever change the way I change courage and compassion, leadership and learning, intuition and trust. Just before reaching that point, the Tibetan guardian asked me, "Are you ready?" Ready for what? I asked silently as I nodded my breath. For the scenery so pure? For a deep feeling of success in climbing? Yes, I'm ready.
However, I am not ready yet. Not ready for me then face.
Besides the Tibetans who guided me, there was an older man who climbed with us that day. He looked very old when I first saw him: lately I knew that he was 59 years old. His skin is rough and wrinkled, dull brown. Her glistening blue-black eyes, with white eyes full of blood vessels, she looked like a troubled person, or tense. However, this is not exposed in the way he walks and climbs, he is so confident and his stamina is remarkable, though his legs are somewhat unbalanced. He was wearing old mountain boots and a heavy dark blue canvas coat outside of his gray work pants and a tattered red switter around his neck. Nails - His nails are enlarged, some of them like the former Broken, others are enlarged due to age or arthritis and he carried a long stick of iron wood which my guide has long held to shine with friction and sweat from his hands.
I was in Tibet for the first time before the next trip, to work on a research project on the nature of leadership. Prior to this, I had spent several years as a consultant with company executives and managers, and studied the scientific findings around the extraordinary performance of people under pressure. Over a period of two decades, I have also studied the lives of various leaders, some of whom are prominent and others not so well known throughout human history. Since 2003, I have been most impressed with one person, a leader who is almost unheard of in the Western world, living in Tibet. He faces agonizing suffering, but rises to glory through a rare style of leadership that blends thoughts and hearts, strengths and compassions and builds an empire that has never been matched by any other leader.
I purposely came to Tibet to trace the footsteps of a leader who lived in the past.
On arriving at the top, the guide stood next to me with the old man. Together, we cast a glimpse into the ancient valleys hidden beneath them. What a stunning and fascinating kick. Sunlight warms our faces. Despite the clear blue sky, soft snowflakes began to fall. I turned to the wind and immediately knew the origin of the snowflakes; a large band of white clouds, backed by a blue sky, seemed to move towards us From the east.
"There. "The old man pointed.
"What's the matter?" I asked with curiosity as I stepped closer to the edge of the cliff.
"There. On the mounds of rocks. "
At the foot of the mountains in the direction we faced, several thousand feet below us, vaguely in the glow of the afternoon sun, I could see a pile of large boulders, as if filling the big holes in the ground. The old man fixed his eyes on it and his hands began to tremble. I glanced at her face in bewilderment when she saw tears begin to wet her cheeks. I turned to my guide Tibet, and he, too, with teary-eyed eyes, seemed moved by something I had not yet understood.
"My whole family," the old man said so quietly that I could barely hear him, "in the tomb there ...... before they take"
"What do you mean?" I asked, guessing that an accident in the climb or something had happened, given the height of where we stood so that if the wind was blowing harder or if our feet stumbled, we could plunge all the way down to the bottom of the valley.
"Do you know what this attitude means?" The old man asked again, clasping his hands together, his fingers pointing to the sky, in front of his chest.
I nodded. Throughout Tibet and the Himalayas, this is the attitude to honor, serve and pray.
He looked me in the eye before proceeding. "In 1959, the Chinese Army forbade us to worship in any form. Before the Chinese invasion, I was chosen by the eldest as one of the future leaders of our villages. "He turned toward the valley's neck, and the area next to him. "That was before I went to college, and before the red troops came and ruined our homes and our livelihoods, our libraries and temples, and raped our wives and children, and forbade us to pray. For over a thousand years, we have almost always been a peaceful nation; we used to have armed forces but we are nothing in the appeal of the Red Army.
No other Country has helped us. That is the dark age for the Tibetans, and for those who escaped from that time ... "He wiped the tears from his cheeks, then continued.
"One day, many years ago, as I walked along that path" he pointed to a narrow pathway that looks like a silver thread across the valley floor, "I passed an old friend, and instinctively, because respect "he clasped his hands in front of his chest" I greeted him with a traditional greeting and said 'Tashi deley', which means 'May you be protected by Him', and we talked for a while "
He went on: "a Chinese Army officer saw me doing so, then he cried, 'Get him. He prayed and spread religion. He's breaking the law. We set an example for others: 'For years I have been protesting about how to treat our nation; but has never attacked anyone or been caught. However, unrest often occurs in the valley and I am sure the Chinese soldiers are watching me, for fear of possible rebellion. The next day, the soldiers gathered all my surviving family members, wives, brothers, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, uncles, aunts, and all the children in my extended family. With barreled firearms, they led some villagers into witnesses while we were instructed to dig a hole. "
He pointed to a stone mound deep below. "Loudly the officer said that the rules must be obeyed, no matter the reason. No one should think or feel anything that is not ordered by Chinese rulers. Then they describe my crime: I have violated the prohibition of prayer and religion, so I am an enemy of the people and government. They announce the punishment imposed on me while four soldiers gripped my legs. "
For a while he could not speak. A breeze changed direction. My guides seemed to be twitching uneasily, his face full of emotion. It was a long time before the old man spoke again: "they ignored my protests. Maybe they've been planning this long. Until now, I do not know. I say again to them greeting in the form of prayer is spontaneous, out of respect to my friend, and I do not spread religion to him. It is not an attitude of disobedience or rebellion to the ruling government. I begged them to punish me, to torture my own, without including others. Answer them, 'Do not worry, you will suffer so much.' Then they ignored me and forced me to look. "
He took a deep breath and exhaled it very slowly, as if it were gathering strength. I myself was seized by a feeling so deep that it was as if I really stood there, many years ago, by her side, as she faced a horrible and shattering event in her life. What happened then, I asked - Ask heart, and how did he react? What's my reaction if I'm really there?
He started talking again, his arm still trembling. "The officers laughed when a group of soldiers dipped the pieces of cloth into gasoline then forcibly dumped them into the throat of my wife and all my relatives and then lit the tarts with fire and pushed them into the pit. The soldiers buried them alive, burning. And the children, the little ones, their screams, their eyes ... .. "He stopped, stood stiffly, his hands trembling uncontrollably.
I felt my blood turbulent and seemed to explode. I tried to imagine if it happened to my family. I imagine my wife, daughter and two little sons who died that way. The snow was falling and I saw a cold breeze blowing in between the rays of light that illuminated the mountains, as if to mourn the one who is now the only surviving member of a family, a leader caught in a situation of fear and oppression. He was punished for clasping his hands in prayer in honor of another.
Imagine it burns my feelings.
Several times in history such horror has occurred? And has such a similar event still going on?
Slowly, the old man turned to me and dried a tear from his cheek. His hand is not wearing gloves and I see snow falling on it and not melting but just like sticking there, wrapping his nails - his old fingernails. Light illuminates his figure, which is frail due to weather, life, and sun, but his eyes shine brightly. He looked at my face; no, he looked through my eyes, like penetrate into my soul. I can not find words to describe how to look at them.
"Now it's your turn to tell," he said in a more steady voice, "about your life and about the United States."
I was very surprised. "My life? America union?" Suddenly I was confused, then angry. "How can you do that?"
"Do what?"
"You just told me about the loss that was so terrible, but then immediately forgot about it."
He raised his head and looked at me with astonishment emanating from his face. "Forget it? I never forget it. They snatched everything from me. Except for two things, two things that no one can take: first, which I appreciate and believe in what I feel, in my innermost being, the truth, even though my mind can not prove or explain it. And Secondly, except to kill me, they can not change the way I reveal Who I am in the journey of my fate. It's the things that make me real and give me hope. "
"But how," I began to argue.
"Thomas," he interrupted, "it was a very sad event. The hardest of my life. I want you to know. You can learn from this story. The selasin, without hearing this, you do not know me. The deepest part of me, my real self. I can never be your guide. And you can not wholeheartedly work beside me or follow me. This thought: Can you trust me, or share my views with me, while Because someone, like the chinese official, ordered it to you,? No. But now, if you want you can start to know me, and work with me, and trust me. Now I'm real, not just a name. I have my heart, voice, and history. I'm not just a stranger who climbs a mountain with you "
Now I'm real not just a name. I have my heart, voice, and history.
"As for your other question," he added, "how do I tell such a horrifying experience but momentarily distract from the story? It's because of you, you are still alive. You are still there, now. The extinct family. Everything that will also be destroyed. Sooner or later. Learning to face is not easy. My Taoi is still alive. Every day, I say it to myself. And now you are here. I can learn from you. I have a job to do. "
I can learn from you.
The old man noticed my confusion.
"You must understand, Thomas, that this is not just about his hands" - the mind. It deals with feelings. "He put his palms on his chest. "In Tibet, we call it a true presence. That is, literally, 'the field of strength'. When we live with this, with the inner self, we can speak to each other openly and honestly, and say things that we feel deeply, even if it is difficult to express. We will strive for ourselves, and work with each other, to be responsible in order to do our best in everything. We will seek to find our own vocation, seeking the path that is destined for us. Everyone has it, and is capable of dealing with suffering and problems but not living in suffering and problems. It's very difficult to work, suffering and problems will not go away, but we should not waste the opportunity to continue learning from whatever we face today. "
As he speaks, my mind drifts to executives, to government leaders, and to the management groups I've been working with over the years. "But can someone else learn it?" I asked. "How about the time we should try to overcome failure or trouble and we are facing another problem, and another problem? If we pay attention to these problems as well. "I try to think rationally," will not we be overwhelmed by it? Would not it be better if we did not face it or feel it until the time came? "
"No," he said after a moment's reflection. No. "We must face whatever comes to us."
"Bridge," said the young guide. "
"Yes," said the old man, who instantly remembered something.
"On the same day as the massacre of my family, the Chinese Army blew up a bridge across the river. To punish us heavier. To force the people, or anyone else, to suffer. We had to take a long detour to cross the river. The officers said, "Take the bridge back if you can. We will not help, "
The old man told me that he was forced to leave the slaughter and, along with other residents, on a sidewalk to the river near the bridge that was in ruins. People are crying, resigned, helpless. He knew he had to choose. Fighting the soldiers and giving up his life, then and in that place, or reacting in other ways. In a state of numbness and pain, and under the pressure of his surroundings, he looked at the ruins of the newly destroyed bridge. She let intuition guide her.
He lifted up a large stone, and with great sadness and tears rushing, he gritted his teeth and walked, no matter the troops of armed soldiers watching him, into the icy stream to a pillar supporting the old bridge, which only left just a little above the surface of the water, then put the stone there. The enemy officers have been told that Tibetans, according to an ingrained tradition, are afraid of deep water, and say they will not, can not, rebuild the bridge. However, they underestimated the depth of courage and emotional character of a man, a man who, before 1959, had been elected to lead his people. The raid has harbored the fate, until a day of terror and explosion. One day that will challenge any leader, or anyone else, to exert all his might. What will I do? Ask me. And I ask you readers, what do you do in that situation?
"I will bring a hundred stones and a hundred logs to each of my dead families." The old man said to the people with fiery eyes. "How much will you carry?"
At first no one answered, no one moved. They look at him, feel his presence once he responds to his fate and his leadership call. He knows that he will not give up, can not help but go into the deep water, or they will die; Not long afterward, everyone was working hand in handling heavy rocks and rolling them all into the water. Eighteen blocks of rock had been transported that day, when the villagers finally wrapped a blanket around her, which trembled from head to toe from sadness and cold.
In the months that followed, they rebuilt the bridge by hand, using an ancient Tibetan-style design, complete with high arches. The bridge is still standing. As a symbol, this bridge is more beautiful and meaningful than before. A living monument to commemorate the heart of a leader's heart, and the whole heart of his people's turmoil.
During the war, the old man, the guide, and I talked about our lives, also about the meaning of life and destiny. I told him the American meaning to me; how a nation is born out of a great struggle to uphold human freedom, rights, and dignity. But I clearly realized what those old Tibetans showed me-and what I was trying to learn-a long-lasting skill that taps into the deepest feelings, the human conscience, no matter what is experienced in live, no matter what challenges and opportunities we face. And that's when I began to believe that such capabilities require not only intellectual intelligence but also emotional intelligence - including the driving energy that animates our feelings and values. We express this in many ways, for example through open, honest, moral, courageous, and creative attitude - making a determined intention to change despite having to face the worst of things into something meaningful, and valuable, while shaping a new future.
The Tibetan leader above, through a great change of situation, almost without help and with limited resources, is forcibly to begin reaching his innermost depths and finding ways to achieve victory against terrible obstacles.
Happy reading and enjoying my story, i hope all of you can learn a lesson that will use my words that are offensive from this story please forgive and there is no offending anyone in this matter.