The symphony of wandering

On July 02, 2010, in Successful leadership, by Neculai Fantanaru

Guide your vision towards excellence, permanently keeping in touch with the true reality.

At the end of the fifteenth century, when the continents were not yet fully discovered, the great sailors had only one concern: to facilitate connections with Asia and to seek the East, sailing westward, in a word, to get on the shortest track to the Land of Spices.

This is what Christopher Columbus tried to do. Relying on the ideas of the famous astronomer Florentine Toscanelli and those of the German cosmographer Martin Behaim, with which he corresponded for a long time, Columbus, at the age of 41, decided to set forth the unknown, to the unpredictable, armed especially with hope, desire to succeed, confidence and courage. His goal was clear. He only wanted “to seek the East through the West and to reach, through the West, the place where the spices came from”.

Not always what you think shall be the reality

Immersed in the thicket of his own thoughts and ideas, Columbus didn't guess in any way that fate will lead him along four journeys full of danger, all of them on unknown realms. Fate tried Columbus twice, guiding him to the New World, and also the many times he didn't abandon the idea, otherwise false, that he was on the coasts of Asia. For, if he rushed into finding Japan, the newly-found islands could only be part of Japan. And because he didn't think of any other possible options, he committed several errors, which changed the whole range of his discoveries.

Columbus had everything necessary in order to excel in leadership, and to exert a notable influence on society: competence, creativity, plentiful energy, tireless self-confidence, courage. He was hardly an old-fashioned man. He was an adventurous sailor, a captain who knew well his job, a good navigator and also a good merchant. Even so, he had a weak point, a flaw that followed him his entire life, a flaw due to which he was about to lose all his advantages: he constantly fed himself with the idea that he was right. Always acting under the influence of a wrong belief, he was wrong each time. And as a result, he died without even realizing the existence of the great continent, which he would not give his name at least.

A second error that Columbus made is that he relied only on some maps drawn by Toscanelli, but which were completely wrong. Instead of trying to deepen things more, and trying to count on him, to investigate better the shores that he discovered, he relied on the idea that there is only one reality, the one rendered on those maps that guided him the entire time.

Limited knowledge narrows your horizons

A captain, who doesn't possess enough advanced knowledge and lacks high-performing instruments and equipment, can mislead himself. Just like a doctor cannot prescribe targeted treatments if he does not have helpful elements to diagnose (for example, lab analysis), so was the case of Columbus, he would not have drifted away if he had accurate navigation maps and advanced navigation tools.

Moreover, each island discovered had plenty of clues, which could help him make the difference between the coast of Asia and the new continent, but he overlooked them. Although he had acquired a far superior training than the sailors of his time, Columbus' horizon was yet limited. His knowledge of astronomy was not as advanced as that of a captain of our times, and he didn't have first quality and precision instruments. At that time, technology was not as advanced as today. During his journeys, he always guided himself by the height of the sun, the conjunction of the stars, the length of nights and days, etc.

A bittersweet symphony

Like a mythological titan condemned supporting the sky eternally, Columbus was condemned to wander the seas and the oceans. For, if we had to sum up all his journeys on sea, we would definitely discover that he mainly drifted, wandering in search of the proposed targets. He discovered several islands on the coasts of America, yet he never really knew where he was. However, his wandering was not useless. Because through his travels, he enriched the geographical knowledge of time with many islands, such as Tortugas, Martinique, Dominica, Maria Gallant, Guadalupe, Montserrat, Santa Maria, Santa Cruz, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Honduras coasts, Mullets islands, Darien gulf.

Columbus experienced many joys and sorrows, but also many victories and defeats throughout his life. His journeys represented a symphony which impressed the world, a symphony in which courage, fortitude and fearlessness combined harmoniously and despite some failures and unsuccessfulness, he rose above the people of his time. Therefore, the name and the glory of the illustrious navigator live everywhere.

Conclusion: Nowadays, a leader should not be compared with a wanderer, who walks on more or less beaten paths, and who does not know how or cannot reach his destination. On the contrary, nowadays, a leader must possess the both methods and the necessary instruments to achieve the final objectives.

Guide your vision towards excellence, permanently keeping in touch with the true reality.