There are countless strong cases of leadership being displayed in “It Might Get Loud,” but in this blog post, I wish to explore a slightly more debatable and ambiguous aspect, yet one that particularly stuck out to me. The characterization of Jack White displayed in the film, to me, had one stand-out feature, which ended up being the thing I took away most strongly from film as a whole: his unwavering intensity and idealism.
He has what I can only describe as a “value of purity.” He wants his music to require struggle. He wants to fight his music, and if it is too easy, then it could never match his standards of what I am calling “purity.” He is incredibly intense about this value, reiterating it repeatedly, and making it effectively the entire basis of his musical identity. The most striking moment for me, and the thing that really stuck with me, was the scene of him making a “guitar” out of a few spare parts and forcing it to have some real, genuine musical identity and purpose.
So how is this leadership? To me, this absolute commitment to a goal, with a powerful sense of idealism in achieving it, is absolutely a leadership quality. The ability to stay so focused on his values is something special and deserves to be recognized not just as a bit eccentric (which, admittedly, it is), but also as a legitimate quality of leadership in a strange way.
"To matter” is a strange concept, and one that, honestly, I think we may focus on a little too much. In the context of leadership and business development, sure it's important there, but beyond that context, I think we could honestly do a little less with it. If we deem that something does not matter, it seems that as a society we then deem that thing not worth doing or caring about. If they do not produce value, things can be cast aside and seen as a waste of time. Sometimes it's okay not to matter, and I simply want to bring that concept forth before going further.
However, that's not to say mattering isn't very often important, either. To matter is simply to affect something in a valuable way, and, well, we need to affect things a lot!
Living a life that matters, given all this, then should not be viewed as a life in which every action or love or feeling matters, but one that has had times when it mattered, in some special or particular way. More directly, to me, living a life that “matters” is simply living a life that has an effect on the world which lasts beyond one's own lifetime (preferably in a positive way, but the definition does extend to negative). If this be through helping others, inventing something influential, or creating something enjoyed by many, it is all the same―a life that matters is a life that touches beyond its direct reach.
Image: It Might Get Loud