If you are young, you live mostly in the future.
If you are old, you live chiefly in the past.
If you are a mature person who is neither old or young, you live in the present.
The best leader is a mature leader. Neither are they concerned about things that happened too long ago in the past, nor are they trying to live too far ahead in the future. They will leave it to the historians to sort out what happened during the British time and let Elon Musk worry about how to populate Mars in the future. They are more concerned about events that are still fresh in their memory or things that are likely to happen in the foreseeable future. A leader's place is in the present. Those who cannot live in the present are those of us who do not have what it takes to be a leader. It is as simple as that.
Things that concern us in the present are the economy, A. I and the likelihood that there might be a change in the new global order. Inflation is raging in our midst. A. I might take away the job of everyone from teachers to lorry drivers to even actors in the not-too-distant future. There is a distinct possibility that China might rise to become the new hegemon of the world. All of this is a something that a mature leader should be paying attention too.
Other than the above, considering the punishing heat that we are enduring now and the spate of floods that endured before that, climate change might also be something that a responsible and concerned leader might want to give some thought about.
But do we have such a responsible and mature leadership in our country?
Well, let's look at what some of our top leaders are up to recently.
Not too long ago, PAS’s President Hadi Awang said that Malays were being “openly conned” and that non-Muslims and non-Malays were the “biggest plunderers”. In response, DAP Chairman Lim Guan Eng called for Malaysians to lodge a police report against Hadi.
Mahathir, our former leader and the grand old man of the nation, has been keeping busy with his Malay proclamation.
Other than dealing with his corruption charges, I don’t really know what the Opposition Leader Muhyiddin Yassin is doing, but from what I can vaguely recall, he is probably also riding on race and religion through the Kalimah Allah and the Malay Proclamation issue.
As for our Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, judging from what a movie about him that has just came out was saying, I suspect that our dear prime minister might still be stuck in the mid to late 90s. The events that happened 25 to 30 years ago, I fear, seems like it only happened yesterday to our Prime Minister.
This is the problem when we have leaders that are just too old. Anwar, Muhyiddin and Hadi are all 75 years of age. Mahathir will be a century old in a couple of more years. The average life expectancy of Malaysians by the way, is 75.9 years of age. Why do we keep electing leaders who have exceeded or are close to exceeding the national life expectancy? What can we expect such a leader to do other than drag us into a world that no longer exists simply because they can’t help but live in a time that has passed.
It is very difficult, impossible even, to make old people live in the present or think of the future. The older you get, the more insignificant you will become in the present and when you think of the future, you will become afraid, because the future has nothing to offer you but death and decline.
To the old, the past is the only place where they can find comfort and refuge. We should not deny them the privilege of indulging in nostalgia, because one day, we too are going to get old, and at that time, we might need the young generation of our time to let us indulge in nostalgias too.
But this world we live in does not merely belong to the old. It belongs to all of us! We haven’t had our time under the sun yet, and if the old keep forcing us to live in a world that no longer exist, we might never have our time under the sun!
How long are we going to pretend like we are interested in things like race or religion or whatever problem it is that these old leaders harp on out of respect for them? A big part of the reason why we keep returning again and again to the subject of race and religion is likely because we have old leaders who are interested in these subjects. If we had young leaders like Khairy Jamaluddin or Anthony Loke at the helm, we might be taking more about A.I or climate change.
Old people are not necessarily wise. People who are wise are people who have a refined sense of justice, balance and proportion. If once in a while the old people that rule us ask us to think about things that interest them like race and religion, that is ok la, but where is the justice, balance and proportion in asking us to be interested in the stuff that is not really that important or relevant to our times, just because they are interested in it, day in and day out.
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t think old age brings with it wisdom. When I was 15, I thought all my cousins and uncles who were in their 30s and 40s and 50s had it all figured out. Now that I am in my 40s myself, I can say with full confidence that I was misguided in believing that as you age, you will automatically gain wisdom and be able to figure things out. We have no reason to believe that a leader is wise just because they are old. As a matter of fact, if we observe many of our elderly leaders, we can even argue that rather than become wise, many of them just decline, become obsolete or lose their mind as they age.
A leader of worth is one who will try to make their name in the arena of today. If you aspire to be a leader, all you have to do is look at your people. In their hearts and minds, there is already a desire and dream. If you feel that you can make the dreams and desires a reality, enter the arena! You are the leader we need!
If you can’t see the dreams and desires of the people, or if you can see it, but you choose to ignore it, because you don’t know how to make it into a reality, and so instead of making the dreams of the people a reality, you spend all your time and energy persuading us to think about things like religion and race simply so that you can still be relevant, it is time for you to hang your boots.
A leader of worth has many things in their possession. Of these things, one of them is the ability to know when it is time to go.
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