Let's refer to the lexicon, and a leader is generally defined as "a person who rules or guides or inspires others".
A person who rules:
Or in other words one who exercises authority over his subjects. The moment the word 'authority' comes before us, we straightaway link it to our loss of freedom, an expression which marks our free thoughts. And that is what we have been finding in the environment around us, and many a times we might have had a negative experience of getting subject to someone's dominion. And thus, without doubt we have to reject anyone or anybody who obstructs our own genuine thought process.
A person who guides:
Guide will surely take us to the nostalgic feelings of various picnic excursions which we had taken in the past. Be it Goa, Shimla or Agra OR be it New York, Rome or London we find that without getting a guide it becomes difficult to explore the beauty of the horizons which the place has to offer. But believe me, this is also restricting our freedom to explore the places taking the help of our feet. So, why do we need a guide? After all time is a great teacher and our endeavor clubbed with it is surely going to give miraculous results.
A person who inspires:
Come on, guys! We very well know the old saying "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". After all, I am not trying to negate the deriving of inspiration but what I mean is we need to be really open to taking inspiration from so many sources. That's what makes our ideologies, our beliefs, our character and after all we. So, that inspiration has the place as much as putting the icing on the cake, which looks good only if the cake is below.
.
.
.
So, where is the problem in the thought process?
.
.
.
There is. All the time we tried to look what we are subject to, that is "rules, guidance and inspiration". But we missed the very important part of the understanding :
"A person who...."
The first and foremost aspect of defining a leader is "a person". Until and unless we define the person whom we are talking about the various other aspects doesn't hold any meaning. And believe me, a change in the person can make a huge difference on what role we can accept in relation to the person. When the person who rules is Lord Ram then that place is lovingly called 'Ram-Rajya' wherein every citizen is loved by the king as His own child. When the person is Lord Krishna the 'guidance' takes the form of the eternal message of the song of God 'Bhagavad Gita'. And when person is the great bowman Arjuna the 'inspiration' takes the form of 'Bhakti-Yoga', the unalloyed devotion to the Lord even at the cost of severing one's own material affection for the spiritual upliftment.
.
.
.
So, believe me dear ladies and gentlemen, we individually and very silently define the leader for own lives. But many a times, due to lack of transparent intelligence we miss choosing our true leader, our true hero!!
