Servant, Not Master

Never forget we are servants of the people, not their masters. Always maintain a sense of humility and service. Never lord it over the people we are looking after and serving

(Straits times, Prime Minister Lee speech to party activist)

Above statement was quoted from Strait Times newspaper on 18th April 2011. Prime Minister Lee gave us a guidance not to forget our existence as a servant of the people and not the people’s master. Never lord it over the people who we are looking after.

This quotes was very interesting and astonishing, there are two words come in my mind afterwards; amazed and miserable. Last time I found a government executive walking in the airport hall with three of his personnel assistance; the first assistance was brought his suitcase, the second one was hold his passport & ticket and the last one was taken care of his travel bag. Unfortunately, those situations were very familiar in the airport, thus, it brought people skepticism and un-respected to the overall government executive.

Is it caused by our homeland character? Or, caused by our government executive’s character? I believe that was not caused by both reasons. In the previous time, when I was attended an international human resource seminar, it was opened by Indonesian Minister of Finance Agus Martowardojo. The speech was very adorable, every one agree that he was a brilliant speaker. He was looked so simple, calm, relaxes, and lighted up.  No one brought him his suitcase or even his speech notes.  In the opening speech he talked about the effort to improve the role and way of thinking of all finance ministry human resource.

Most of the participants agree Mr. Agus is very intellectual open minded person. But some of participants also think that as a Minister should have personnel assistant wherever he is and not necessarily shows his weaknesses.

There are some people opinions that to be a leader should be like a master and shows his ego as a big leader with many personal assistants. But some people also think that to be a leader is came from a trust from God that and have a main task to serve and establish a positive environment in their group or peoples.

It is challenging to define which one is right and wrong. It does because of embossing our personal value is not easy. Those values was developed from individual backgrounds, individual way of thinking and individual act. The most important thing in life is how we manage our meaning of life by preparing our main life focus in order to establish a central of gravity in our life.

There some people who put their central of life in money, success, and articulate that success is come from hard work in every way, thus the success will be enjoyed with acquire expensive goods and have many personal assistant.

However, there are some people who think that success is a gift, thus, it should be share to the others. Those contradictive opinions will define what kind of background someone has as a leader.

Everyone has their own opinion regarding those issues. There will be a contradictive and differences in their opinion. The thinking about the values above is very important in character, soul, and life values development of our children, partner, employees and leader in the company. Those values should be become a culture from the company and family circle. Those will be important for the following questions:

How do the children will act if they live far from their parents? How do the employees work when they leaders are not in place? How do the company and the family will run when the highest leaders or highest authority leader is not exist, passed away or even there is a change?

When reflected the success or life value, I tried to still take pleasure in the life and bring my heart to give the best to the others. At the end I will try and learn to develop good value and characters in life. I will always remember this statement.

When we could feel enough, there will be gratitude and gratefulness to the God.  Thankfulness will lead to satisfaction feeling in our heart, and lead to kindness and respect to the others.

Let this reflection make us to revisit what is our meaning of life. Thus we could make our life means to the others.

We make a Living by what we get

We make a Life by what we give

(Winston Churchill)