Resilience & Determination

Two cold and harsh tales that tell the difference that leadership styles can make.

Locked in Ice by William Bradford, 1882 (public domain)

“Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.”

― William Ernest Henley, 1888

We all experience setbacks. It’s just part of life. We run into obstacles, whether they’re related to time, resources, difficult personalities, changes in circumstances, etc.

The true mark of a leader is how they respond to these kinds of difficulties. There are some leaders who look at the facts and decided to put their heads down and plow through; and there are others who assess the situation and alter their plans — sometimes comprehensively.

I recently had a health issue that was causing me a lot of pain. So much so that it made it impossible to concentrate on anything: reading, writing — even meditating.

Rather than fight it, like I usually do with an illness, I decided to visit the doctor. It’s a good thing I did, because the doctor warned that it wouldn’t have gotten better without care.

After treatment, the pain still lingered for about a week, but it made me realize a couple of things: (1) humans are so much softer than our ancestors, who had to endure conditions beyond our imagination; and (2) how other leaders have managed to get themselves through situations of unimaginable hardship.

Cold Leadership

The stereotypical visualization of Hell is usually fire and brimstone, with Satan wielding a pitchfork as molten lava flows all around. But in Dante’s Inferno, there were nine circles of Hell, each with varying forms of tortuous surroundings.

The Ninth Circle of Hell, in Dante’s telling, was the frozen central zone of Hell where Satan was trapped in ice, frozen up to his mid-chest. This is the area where the worst sinners were sent, unable to speak or move, frozen in the ice.

According to Rachel Jacoff (Dante, Cambridge University Press, 1963) Dante portrayed the worst of Hell this way because

“the deepest isolation is to suffer separation from the source of all light and life and warmth.”

Imagine then, that it’s the early 1900s and you’re undertaking a physical and geographical adventure that no other human being has achieved: you’re going to travel to Antarctica, the last unexplored continent, and you’re going to march to the South Pole.

This of course is exactly what Captain Robert Falcon Scott sought in 1910 when his Terra Nova Expedition set out. He had already led the Discovery Expedition from 1901–1904 to explore Antarctica, and his goal in his return was to be the first to reach the South Pole.

As humans spread around the globe, the polar regions were a couple of the few remaining areas to conquer, so competition was fierce. There was a Japanese Antarctic expedition in the works, as well as an Australasian expedition, and the Norwegians, under Roald Amundsen, were going to explore the Arctic.

The Terra Nova set out from Wales on June 15, 1910, prepared to arrive in the Antarctic for its summer months. By the time it reached Melbourne, though, a telegram from Amundsen was waiting for Scott, indicating that the Norwegians were headed south. It was to be a race, then.

Scott was a Royal Navy man (did I just sing that to myself to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme?), beginning his naval career as a 13 year-old cadet. He worked his way up through the most hierarchical system, with the Discovery voyage serving as a way to further his advancement. This culture and tradition would eventually doom Scott — more on that later.