Caveat Emptor - Let the Buyer Beware

We’ve all heard our candidates both from the Republican and the Democratic parties describe their capabilities, their confidence, their accomplishments and their visions – all vital leadership elements.

However as humans we are also plagued with doubt, restlessness, fear, remorse and guilt. These are emotions that we are most likely to ignore and definitely not think of as acceptable qualities in our leaders.

But here’s why I think self-doubt is as important as confidence.

In one of her letters to her friend Eleanor Roosevelt, the activist wife, of President Franklin Roosevelt makes a rather unusual observation. Confiding her shock and disbelief at the inhumane treatment of Jewish prisoners in Germany, during the 2^nd World War, she wonders how the world continues to function seemingly untouched by the plight of these innocent people.

In her letter, she goes on to express her horror as other commuters on the train reading the same morning newspaper seemed to be unaffected while she could barely contain her pain. ‘How could America choose not to enter the war and stop this atrocity?’ she sadly questions.

Needless to say she did her part in encouraging her husband to cajole a reluctant nation into warfare.

Leadership as it turns out also involves the ability to guide a fear filled and anxious people into doing that, which is right and morally correct.

Unlike what’s generally assumed, human progress rests upon the shoulders of the most sensitive amongst us. Simple, everyday humans who have the capacity to read the feeling tone and suffering of those around them contribute for almost all major successes in our progress.

While at times a confident populist seems desirable as a leader. One lacking doubt of any kind is simply dangerous. For when a nation is most pressed to act, we need people capable of careful introspection.

Most times an internal temperature taking enables us to identify the underlying motivations that are guiding are actions, thereby empowering us to consciously reject baser and short- sighted ones such as anger and anxiety and pick instead the higher values of kindness and compassion

 We have somehow inherited the idea that doubt, restlessness and conflict are simply useless. But in my mind these are the harbingers of positive and lasting change as they signify the expansion of a living and breathing consciousness and not of one that is stagnant or unresponsive to its environment.

I wonder which one of our frontrunners has the audacity to be fully human?