I was at this conference for “Leaders”.
Now leaders are just ordinary folks with fancy titles because someone accidentally followed them once without realising it and someone else who was a “leader” saw it and said “look...there goes a leader” and so from then on they were called a “leader” even though immediately after the follower started following the leader, they realised their mistake and quickly stopped and started following someone else who then got to be called a “leader”.
But anyways.... we was at this conference for “leaders”, and there was this guest speaker.
Now a guest speaker is a guest who speaks.
And this guest speaker was speaking something about ships. It was all about leaderships.
Now I’m all for leaderships, or any kind of ship really. Fellowship is good, friendship is good, apprenticeship is good, and computers have something called a microship, and then of course there’s fish and ships...so you can see I’m right into ships and stuff, so leaderships can’t be too bad either.
But the thing was that this guest speaker who was a speaking guest at our conference for leaders was saying things like “You have to do this” and “You have to do that” and then “You need to do this” and “You need to do that”.
Well... somehow, I got it into my head that this guest speaker who was a leader oughtn’t be trying to push me around so much and keep telling me that “I have to” and “I need to” cos I was already feeling pretty tired over all this leadership stuff.
So I started counting how many times this guest speaker was saying “I have to” and “I need to”.
And when I reached 35 times, I said to myself that if this guest speaker who was a leader says “I have to” one more time, I’m going to leap right up out of my seat in the middle of this conference and make a really big scene and demand an apology in a very aggressive tone.
You know those very spiritual prophecies a person gives at 600 miles per hour, and you know it has to be God because no normal human being can talk that fast under normal circumstances and so everyone shouts “amen” at the end even though they didn’t understand a word of it.? Well that was the kind of tone I was gonna use....
So here I was just waiting with baited breath for this guest speaker to say “I have to” one more time, which would make 36 times in all.... and blow me down..... she did.!!
So I thought to myself “Right... that does it”, and so guess what I did..?
Nothing.
I just sat there and passively listened to the guest speaking leader say it all over again another 28 times.!!
Can you imagine the defeat. Can you imagine the feelings of failure.
I was useless. I had failed in my mission to save all of us following followers from the guest leading speaker who was leading the followers who were following the leader.
I was miserable.
Everyone at the conference for leaderships was disappointed in me because I didn’t freak out and stop the guest speaker from her incessant “I have to’s”.
My credibility was gone. It was over for me. No-one could ever look to me again to be rescued from the insanity of a conference for leaders made up of followers who listened to leaders.
And now we would have to do it all over again next year.
So there was only one thing left for me to do...and we did it.
We left.
Yep.... I mean departed. Vamoosed. Jumped ship......leadership that is... and we took off at a great rate of knots and headed for home, checking of course that we was not being followed by any following leaders.
And instead of staying at that conference for leaders learning about leaderships and how to “have to” and “need to”, we went and done some retail therapy and spent some of the banks money which was really ours anyway because they gave it to us to spend and we did, but they want it back and we bought a new lounge suite.
And I have decided I am not going to do it. I am not going back on that ship again. No more conference for leadership followers next year for me, cos “I don’t have to” and “I don’t need to” and “I don’t want to” and..... I don’t have a problem...... with leadership.!!
