"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."
-David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

      At this time when the pages to follow far outnumber the pages completed, I am just beginning to outline my life. I have not yet sat down to start writing the composition: I do not feel ready. However, like many authors of great works, I do have an idea of how I would like my life to end, what I would like my gravestone to read. In the most concise and personal summations of his life, Charles Dickens�s epitaph reads: �He was a sympathiser to the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world.�[1]  This suggests that Dickens became the hero of his own life. In order to gain that distinction in my life, I aspire to become a silent leader - a quiet influence � develop lasting relationships by sharing in the lives of others, appreciating the beauty of life, valuing overlooked details, and finding balance.
      The painting of a face below is entitled Femme en Pleurs by Pablo Picasso. It contains several links to each subsequent section of my paper. Each feature on the fragmented face represents a specific aspect of my goal (the four topics from my thesis). This painting fits my leadership vision because it combines the normal features of any face � the , nose, ears, mouth, hair, and even the eyebrows � but combines them in a unique and disproportional way, mirroring the direction I feel my life heading in right now. Just as the face is distorted, so too are the aspects of my life I hope to develop. For instance, I feel that I need to focus more on developing relationships than finding balance right now and therefore these goals are not equally ranked in terms of their importance, but instead in terms of my personal desires. Like a real face, in my future these ideas will be equivalent in my life, but like a painting, in my mind my goals of paying attention to details and appreciating the beauty of the world around me come more naturally than developing my goals of relationships and finding balance. The less naturally ingrained aspirations require more attention to develop, just like certain feature of the face from Femme en Pleurs are grotesquely large or daintily small.  Please click on the mouth now . (Further directions will be found at the bottom of each link)