I never met my paternal grandfather. He passed away years before my birth. Growing up I heard stories and fragments of stories which I still try to piece together into a complete picture of his personality. I heard about the traditionally rough childhood during and after World war II when he left home daily to go to a market 20 kilometres away to sell some eggs and cheese and to provide for his family while his father was in prison. I know the stories about him losing his mother and never recovering from that, and I know the broad strokes of his life. However, I haven’t found the key to understanding him in any of those stories.

It took years of organising books in my fathers library to stumble upon a set of World war II novels he collected and read. That is when I decided to look for my grandfather on those pages that he also read some forty years ago. I found him in some lines which he found so important to underline. One of the underlined lines was a quote by US Army general William Sherman (the M4 tank was named after him). My grandfather underlined his quote “We have good corporals and good sergeants and some good lieutenants and captains, and those are far more important than good generals.”

This line was a bridge, the first real connection, when I began to believe that I understand my grandfather because I have been plagued by this thought for so long and found nobody willing to understand it, until recently. We as a people, have many great character traits, but we as of late lack one and that may prove itself to be our doom. We have no obedience, no followship, and every single one of us has the illusion that the burden of leadership has been trust upon his/her shoulders.

I remember being invited to all kinds of leadership seminars and conferences. Youth, student, religious, gender based, literally if there is a group, there is someone organizing a leadership seminar for the most ego-driven members of that group to socialize and learn how to lead. I have yet to be invited to a followship seminar, and these are more important than leadership seminars. However, followship requires eliminating the ‘I’ from the equation; and this is not an easy thing to do.

People now hear the stories of great conquests but totally miss the major lessons. The story of Alexander the Great is not only a story about a young commander, but of the thousands of soldiers willing to follow him to the end of the known world. Joan of Arc is not the only hero of French resistance to English occupation, we fail to see the hundreds of crushed male egos who managed to be commanded by a teenage girl when going into war. Whether it is about Salahuddin who conquered Cairo at the tender age of sixteen, or Thomas Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of Independence at thirty two, all stories of remarkable success include a great number of people who were willing to follow one leader and to suppress their own ego. Perhaps, not in the case of Jefferson since he was more of a political actor than an actual leader, but nonetheless.

A friend of mine once defined Sufism as the belief that there are as many ways to God as there are human breaths. There is a subtle link in Arabic between ‘breath’ and ‘ego’ and the best way towards God is denying the egoistic pleasures of self-gratification, self-celebration and self-promotion. All of these are miraculously removed by the mere virtue of followship. We ought to organise that course as soon as possible. Followers need leaders and one of the excuses for our lack of followship is that we don’t see others to be worthy of our following them. This, of course, is not true, but a reflection of our inflated egos, and thus it is the first sign that we are in great danger. If you read this and don’t see anyone you could follow, then you are being blinded by your ego, and being part of the problem. Take this advice and learn to follow.

It is possible to read these lines out of time and place, but also it is possible to read them as a political commentary for political manoeuvres being played out this month in Kuala Lumpur/Putrajaya and in Sarajevo.