The Help Force

Hello my children. Welcome back to the third part of the A De-lice-ious story.  This one was not an easy one to write as I try to be as neutral as possible and not to offend anyone and tell a story from a leader perspective. Please read it through and give me your feedback, I love talking to some of you and debating our points of view after seeing what I had posted.

Who’s right?

After being part of the Army Community for a while, I had said that the two things that an Army Community (as a whole, not just a specific army) needs to live are toxicity and drama. It will be inevitable. There will be times of peace, times where there is nothing wrong, everything is going good but there will be also times of disagreements, where people have issues or conflicts amongst each other. You have probably also seen it in your army community life at least once: “this person is banned from this place for spreading rumors, false information or breaking the rules”, “army A declares war on army B for these reasons”, “we hate person A because of how they are”, etc.

But let’s go in a smaller-scale situation. In some conflict cases, the staff members or leaders or hicoms from the army are called to be intermediates. They are supposed to have enough capacity to act as a neutral third party and try to solve the conflict or issue. The conflicts could happen between two armies, same army troops, staff members or even within the leaders. If they can’t find a solution by themselves, someone else has to intervene (the third party) and is expected to listen to both sides so they can give their unbiased point of view and reach an agreement that benefits both parties and ends the issue. It is easier when you don’t have a close relationship to the people involved, but what happens when the conflict involves a close friend or someone you talk or work with in a daily basis? You probably wouldn’t want to lose their friendship, right?

The perks of the job

Because of this situation, I had developed a mindset while I was leader: “The Army comes first.” I had decided to give all my ideals, thoughts, strength and more in benefit of the army, no matter who the people involved were, no matter how close my relationship with the people involved was but for the benefit of the majority. In consequence I had lost many, many friendships to the point that I got used to it. The pain one felt after losing someone dear became so common that I became numb to it.

Even still, whenever I take part of a situation or am involved in a clash of opinions amongst people I try that everyone has both sides of the story. It is easy to blame the leadership of an army if someone goes and says they had been treated unfairly by the leadership or someone, but do you have the leadership or that someone’s version? Do you know what happened behind the scenes? Before taking your conclusions, you should always try to know both sides of the story and then try having an unbiased opinion. I am not telling you to think like me; after all we are unique and have our own mindsets. But I am talking from my experience as former leader and current guardian of the army. As one of my friends said once: Truth Prevails.

Another thing that you had to do as leader was neglecting stuff in real life and focusing on the army. Putting more time and effort into the army issues and activities to the point that you don’t sleep or don’t finish that school homework or study for that exam. We named it “HF Syndrome” and it is basically a non-written requirement for the leader or any staff member. In consequence you feel stressed, you feel tired easily and you sometimes lose the motivation to do things. That is why, it is important to maintain a balance between the real life and the virtual life. I’m not saying having a virtual life is bad, because we all enjoy being part of the community and having fun there, but we shouldn’t neglect our duties and responsibilities. If mom or dad says “finish your homework” then finish your homework before the event so you won’t have any trouble attending it. If they say “clean your room”, then maybe join a VC and put up some music while you clean your room. Remember Real life >>> Virtual Penguin Army.

Not everyone is your friend

Another perk of being leader is the power. People tend to be nice to you because of your status. You might disagree with me on this point, but again this is my point of view and I’m talking from my experience. Some staff members, some non-staff high ranked people may even relate to this situation. As I said in the second post people tend to change, situations tend to change, and even if you change your surroundings will change too.

When I was leader people used to say that they were scared of me, even nowadays I hear that. I always try to have a good time and enjoy with the community and I do realize and know I have a short-temper sometimes for things that annoy me. But close people to me know how I behave and when I am joking and when I am not. Some people used to treat me nice always because of the simple fact that I was leader. Any leader has to gain their troops respect and loyalty; if people follow them because they fear them then it is not a leadership.  I don’t know if people saw me as a dictator amongst The Triads back in the days but I do know that once I stopped being leader when I had retired back in September 2019 many people who I considered close people stopped talking to me. That made me realize, they were friends with the Leader, not Elp. It sometimes makes someone think that the Leadership is a lonely job. You have to be professional all the time. You have to quit some behaviors, change some things in your personality in order to fill in the shoes and requirements of the job. You can’t be joking all the time because it causes a clash of opinions. Some people might agree and laugh with you but others will see you as unprofessional and not taking your status seriously.

So does that mean you can’t trust anybody? You can’t have friends? No. However someone relates to people, it depends. Some are easy in making friends, others have it more difficult. You can have people you know, people you work with but you should difference the people who are colleagues and who you call friends. A colleague is someone you relate to because of a certain situation, the term is usually used in jobs. A friend is someone who you develop a close bond with. Let me ask you, most of the troops in Help Force have finished school or are going to. How many people are in your class? Are you friends with every single one of them? Are you still in contact with all of them even after you had graduated from school? What about Help Force? Do you still talk to those people that aren’t in Help Force anymore? Do you still talk to people you believed to be close with? I’m not trying to be negative, pity myself nor guilt-trip anyone. Again, this is just my point of view.

I hope that after you read this through, you value more two things: your real life responsibilities and the effort and work the leader, staff members and people put into the army. It is important that everyone gives their contribution to the army to keep being the Best Force.

And thank you everyone for your feedback from the last post and also to those that congratulated me for getting the Legend status. It was something I was truly not expecting at all to obtain but I just do what I like to do. I hope you do too.

I wish you all a Happy New Year and that you take care, wash your hands, enjoy with your family, enjoy with the community and keep unleashing the power of helping. See you next time!

~ Elp, The Lice. Help Force guardian.

P.D. Sorry for the lack of images in this post.

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