ALMOST exactly 50 years ago, on October 14, the Norwegian Nobel committee announced its annual peace prize was awarded to US civil rights leader Martin Luther King jnr as an "undaunted champion of peace".
Five decades on, the Nobel committee has now unveiled the youngest ever winner as this year's recipient, Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani woman shot in the head by the Taliban for demanding basic educational rights.
The soaring public leadership of such individuals is, at once, both mesmerising and inspiring for furthering progressive social change. But it's also a chance to remind ourselves that we don't give Nobel prizes to epitomise great leadership.
Internationally, former president Mary Robinson has placed the issues of climate change and social justice at the intersection of future north-south global relations.
In Rome, Pope Francis is striving to live his own lesson of hope by challenging the theocracy of hypocrisy led by (what former president Mary McAleese calls) an "old boys club" in the Catholic hierarchy.
Stunningly courageous activists are battling to ensure that the brutality of Israel's apartheid occupation in Palestine is no longer acquiesced by selfish international interests.
Here in Ireland, Martin McGuinness is gently founding new bridges of friendship over rivers of historical hurts in privately powerful engagements, while promoting greater unity of a national kind.
And immeasurable leadership is all around us in community groups and frontline public services, promoting inclusion, equality and rights for migrant communities, Travellers, LGBT people, the homeless, the jobless, the ill and the addicted.
So, each of us today needs to realise the hugely transformative value of our own individual leadership in personally furthering our island's future positive development.
Because leadership is simply that quality of our characters which inspires ideas from our hearts into our heads - which transforms positive hopes into practical realities. Leadership is that quality which excludes exclusion from our toolbox of life. That which seeks to break down walls around 'the other' - the elderly, the lonely, the disabled, the abused, the heart-broken, the unequal, the voiceless, the prisoner, the opposition. Leadership is that quality which humbly faces into our own deepest faults and fears, whilst always striving to tip the scales of life's justice back favourably through one act of greater good or higher purpose.
Leadership is not a title. Nor an award. Nor a job. It's a concept. A philosophy. A way. To to be lived.
We don't all need to be a Martin Luther King, or a Malala Yousafzai, or a Rosa Parks, or a Bobby Sands. Their respective historical leadership is through circumstance as much as conviction.
Often the positive ripples of great leadership take years to roll out towards history's horizons after one small pebble is tossed. Like refusing to sit at the back of a bus. Or refusing to wear a criminal uniform.
But most times, small acts of leadership are enough to, at least, inspire hope and invite change. Through thoughtful encouragement. Or honest criticism.
Leadership means understanding that sometimes we can hamper the brilliance of our own gifts by bowing to the cowardice of our own guilts - that we settle for 'less' in life because we're afraid of the changes that 'more' might bring.
It means recognising that our relentless modern social systems can sometimes simply steam-roll over unheard hurts and undone dreams. And then resolving to change that. Leadership means gathering the imperfect fragments and glistening the potential of our humanity together again every morning that we reawaken. And choosing to make change, in ourselves, for our society, by not limiting our positive expectations to the constraints of globalised negativity.
It means speaking out solidly in those halls of history where difficult thoughts are suffocated and uttering honest challenge whenever a status quo pursues power without principle. It means having the gumption to throw a thousand jigsawed ideas onto the table of life, hoping that just one of them fits enough to make a positive difference - socially, economically, politically, professionally, or personally.
It means reforging rusting courage over the hardened anvil of life's past struggles. And re-discovering the confidence we've long since forgotten in the complex depth of our lived lives. And standing up straight. With attitude. And purpose.
Leadership means each of us opening our heads to the greatness that lies deep within each others' hearts. Even when we disagree deeply. Or misunderstand. And then believing that small, positive, incremental acts can cumulatively bring about a better Ireland. Without ever winning a Nobel prize. j.kearney@irishnews.com