Friends:

I learned something recently about bullfighting that I found fascinating and relevant for you transformational leaders and people who just care about creating a more beautiful world.

This thing came to my mind time and time again this weekend as I witnessed the transformational leadership of the children at the various Marches for Our Lives:

>> The leadership of Emma Gonzales, who has been truth-telling like a wise old woman and mightily holding power to account for weeks now, since Parkland.

>> The leadership of MLK’s little 9-year-old granddaughter, Yolanda Renee King, who declared her own dream that “enough is enough.”

>> The skin-tingling clarity and leadership of Naomi Wadler, who spoke up for black women victims of gun violence: the single most likely demographic group to be shot and killed in this nation—TWICE as likely as any other group, according to the CDC. This ELEVEN-year-old called out the sordid truth that “it’s subconsciously embedded into peoples’ minds that somebody with a darker complexion is worth less and their life isn’t as valuable as a white girl or man’s.”

She also stood for her generation, in their power with total and complete lucidity: “My friends and I might still be 11 and we might still be in elementary school, but we know. We know life isn’t equal for everyone and we know what is right and wrong. We also know that we stand in the shadow of the Capitol, and we know that we have seven short years until, we too, have the right to vote.”

But back to this thing I learned. In bullfighting, there’s a concept called querencia, from the infinitive querer: to desire. As you can imagine, when a bull goes out to fight, he’s 100% on the defensive: he’s reacting to his circumstances and entrapment, he’s reacting to the matador’s provocations, he’s just constantly reacting out of his own fear and rage.

As powerful as every bull seems (and is), it is actually at its least powerful when all of its actions are reactions.

But during any given bullfight, there’s a place in the arena where the bull can find a momentary home: a place of safety where he can take a moment, stop reacting out of rage and reclaim his natural strength and power.

This spot in the ring and in the bull’s mind is called his querencia. It is both geographic and metaphysical. And it is no joke.

The bullfighters say that once a bull takes the opportunity to pause, recalibrate, stop reacting and tap into its true power, an incredible transformation takes place, just that fast. Allow a bull to stop and find its querencia, and it becomes unstoppable.

Ernest Hemingway even observed and wrote about this:

“A querencia is a place the bull naturally wants to go to in the ring, a preferred locality… It is a place which develops in the course of the fight where the bull makes his home. It does not usually show at once, but develops in his brain as the fight goes on. In this place he feels that he has his back against the wall and in his querencia he is inestimably more dangerous and almost impossible to kill.”

— Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

I believe that’s what we witnessed, if we were paying attention, this weekend. These children have been in the fight. Virtually all of them were born after Columbine, in a world where school safety has always been a more or less oxymoronic phrase.

But in their brains and hearts and spirits, they’ve found their querencia. They are no longer simply reacting to this shooting or that allegation. Sure, they are on a mission to uproot some of what’s broken in our nation. But they are solidly claiming their power to proactively create the world they know is possible; a world in which children can really be the heroes that create a world that works better for everyone.

They are in their querencia, and they are unstoppable. The world will have to expand and adjust to them, not the other way around. It already is. See, for example, today’s NYT piece from Justice Stevens encouraging these young ladies and gentlemen to keep it up and consider casting their eyes on a much bigger prize: the Second Amendment of the Constitution.

Catch this principle: when you stop reacting and get clear on who you really are and why you’re really here, when you stand in your querencia, everyone and everything must take notice and either get on board or get out of the way.

It doesn’t matter whether the change you are here on this planet to help make is in the lives of a hundred million constituents, a hundred customers, the 40 kids in your classroom or the two in your own home. It’s all worthy of life force. The truth is that you came here on a mission, and judging that mission is a repressive endeavor. Endeavoring to get clearer and clearer on what it is, on the other hand, is extremely worthwhile.

That’s what transformational leaders know, and that’s what they learn how to do. We are creators, not reactors.

Head up + heart out,