To the 80 people who forgot to cancel their subscription to my blog, consider this one of my last, but hopefully you glean a little bit more about me, and are able to forward this to young racers (men and women) who may be struggling with this.
TL;DR: Following is not a bad thing.
It only took me more than two years since Training Camp to come to this realization, so who said the Race ever stops having an impact on your life?
Redemption would come in the form of Training Camp, I told myself. More than 20 years of believing something so adamantly about myself, and people constantly overlooked it. They didn’t see what I knew about myself, they didn’t see that I was the best for the job. They didn’t see that I was the Hercules or Maximus of my generation, meant to lead the Army of God upon the battlefield and smite all of troops of the Enemy.
Peer leadership in high school. Captain of various sports teams. World Race team leader.
The first two had passed me by, given to comparatively incompetent people with nothing to give.
The third would be mine.
I spent all of Training Camp politicking to the right people, buddying up with anyone I felt had sway. This was my element. I am a borne manipulator (sorry mom). If I could just get this title– maybe even squad leader, my Race– my life, would have meaning.
After all, I am meant to lead, not to follow.
I looked down on those who complacently followed. I understood the fall of Caesar, Brutus wanted to lead. I get it. I would have done it too, I bet.
…I didn’t get it. Again. They overlooked me. They gave it to people with no life skills, no knowledge of the world, no experience. How could they do that? I’m the best.
The bitterness set in.
I carried it nearly the whole Race. It fractured the relationship with my first leader, Brandon Boyd, the poster child of the World Race. What a load of crap. He’s inept, I told myself. He’s making blunders left and right. He has literally no idea what he’s doing. This is ridiculous, I should be leading.
We could never get close. The first couple weeks were all right, but after that? I couldn’t stand him. Why did leadership not shift things up? Why couldn’t they see how terrible at it he was, I thought?
I can do it better, I thought. I’m not a follower, I’m a leader.
This was mentality for the first nine months of the Race. I hated my leader. I hated the leadership of AIM and the World Race. I hated the Race itself. I hated the spiritual crap. I was a lukewarm Christian at best, and dealt with the Race because I needed to wake up and grow up.
Manistry month– Malaysia. That was a cataclysm. Surrounding by testosterone (I like socializing with women for this reason), the God-complexes, the poster child, the ones who stole the titles from me. And they all sucked. They all were terrible. They were winging it, and we all knew it, I thought. Especially that other one. Man, I hated him. He was so fake. So judgmental. So disingenuously friendly. I could see right through him.
He could see through many of my facades, probably because he wore some of them himself, and I hated him for it. He had been picked, despite the flaws I perceived. He didn’t get everything he assumed about me right, but he got some of it. No one could understand the enigma of me. I had walls built up around me of steel. If there was something Superman couldn’t see through, that’s what they were made of. But this guy, this pompous, arrogant, piece of crap could, I thought. And he was leading when I wasn’t. The ridiculousness of it.
Those walls hid a prevailing sense of inadequacy.
My entire life I’d been looked over, and I was angry about it, not simply discontent.
I am meant to lead, not to follow.
The bitterness finally lifted in Kenya. I didn’t really recognize at the time why my Race got so much better, I thought it was a shift in teams, a new start. My squadmates could certainly sense it.
But it was this: I simply didn’t care about the titles anymore.
Brandon Boyd and David Gardner were incredible leaders. You could see it in the eyes of those who followed them. The trust, the love, it all swam in their eyes and all I could see through the film of my envy was flaws I probably imagined.
So to Brandon, and to David, let this serve as my apology. More with David, I wasted an opportunity to get to know and learn from someone who those I trust say is a hell of a guy.
The rest of the Race was great, truth be told. Once I shirked the egotism and self-centeredness, and now two years later, I realized something very important, and by this time I’m sure you know it.
I was meant to follow, not to lead.
Note the tense choice (journalism major, after all). I didn’t say am, I said was. One day in the correct arena, with the correct experience, I will excel at leadership, I don’t shy away from it, but I don’t covet it any longer.
I wasted nine months of my Race.
The thing I was meant to do on the Race was something I refused to do, and something in retrospect I regret, probably the only thing I regret from the Race.
I wanted to be valued, and I thought that was in the form of being a leader; I didn’t think “second-in-command” or “follower” was sufficient. I see now that I was immensely valued by my team(s) and, in particular, Brandon.
I could have spent the entirety of my Race supporting those who had been chosen to lead, incorporating skills and knowledge I had learned throughout the course of my life to make them better, to edify them, to help shape them into a better Man (or Woman) of God.
That should have been the purpose of my Race. That should have been how I spent my 11 months. God had me in a position of support for a reason. The leadership didn’t get it wrong, I simply didn’t get it right.
People (me in this instance) are often too immature to realize that the Race shouldn’t boil down to being picked or not picked. Some are chosen. There is a difference. All of us were picked by God. Some were simply chosen. It’s not a bad thing or a good thing. It simply is. Along those lines, I often wondered if the other angels were pissed off at Gabriel and Michael for being “picked” to be awesome. (Prolly not– too busy singing). Food for thought.
If you’re going through this now, most likely secretly, or know someone who is, please don’t hesitate to share this with them.
~Jordan Dale
C: 770-630-1199
