The Charismatic Personality: Isolated & Alone

In the past, I have referred to the charismatic personality as requiring a high degree of “self- containment,” isolation and solitude. Typically, I referred to these elements of detachment cavalierly as if the charismatic personality had a choice in the matter. Well, of course, there is always a choice, but such passion and focus lends itself to a natural cocoon, which he operates within. To work in order to transform a piece of intellectual real estate for the sole benefit of the charismatic’s need for distinction goes far deeper than most people’s desire to engage in work merely to enjoy the finer things in life. To the world, the charismatic’s isolated reality seems depressing and filled with despair.

Opponents of such asceticism ask,”Where is the joy, balance and love for life?” For the charismatic, building a body of work that supersedes physical existence is the joy itself. Immersing oneself in the process from idea to fruition is fundamentally what the charismatic lives for. His mission and ideas cannot be relegated to the metrics of quantitative analysis nor can the completion of a mission be forecasted on a calendar. The charismatic who wishes to astound the world with his brilliance works in the field of ideas with reckless abandon. If aloneness and solitude overtake him, it is only because he has pushed the envelope too far into areas where most men fail to endeavor out of fear as well as the lack of imagination. If the charismatic is a tragic figure, it is because his world is an amalgam of all the great ideas that came before him trying to find relevance in a world that has stopped thinking.

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