rela tionships with others that we learn about ourselves. As
Boris Pasternak wrote in Doctor Zhivago,
Well, what are you? What is it about you that you have always
known as yourself? What are you conscious of in yourself:
your kidneys, your liver, your blood vessels? No. However far
back you go in your memory it is always some external mani-
festation of yourself where you come across your identity: in
the work of your hands, in your family, in other people. And
now, listen carefully. You in others—this is what you are, this
is what your consciousness has breathed, and lived on, and en-
joyed throughout your life, your soul, your immortality—your
life in others.How, then, do we resolve the paradox? This way: leaders
learn from others, but they are not made by others. This is the
distinguishing mark of leaders. The paradox becomes a dialec-
tic. The self and the other synthesize through self-invention.
What that means is that here and now, true learning must
often be preceded by unlearning, because we are taught by our
parents and teachers and friends how to go along, to measure
up to their standards, rather than allowed to be ourselves.
Alfred Gottschalk, chancellor emeritus of Hebrew Union
College, told me, “The hardest thing I’ve had to do is convey
to children, my own and others, the necessity of coming to
terms with themselves. Their interests aren’t deep. They don’t
think about things. They accept what they’re told and what
they read or see on TV. They’re conformists. They accept the
dictates of fashion.”
Asked to define his philosophy, Gottschalk said, “I value the
need for the individual to feel unique and for the collective to
Knowing Yourself