Fostering emergence, naming the grief, and navigating the liminal zones
The hd expo at Mandalay Bay, Jackie and Shadow and the eaglets, and imagining yourself at age 80
My nephew, who will graduate from high school in a few weeks, is passionate about design and interior spaces. He’s always remaking the look of his room and recently spent birthday money on an expensive lamp. He owns books on design from around the world. Cares for his Staghorn Fern like a father. Took up ceramics in high school. Buys art when he travels. I could be forgetting some of his adventures, but I know he’s been to Japan, Mexico, Portugal, and used to live in the Marshall Islands, so he’s already absorbed a variety of influences and the unique aesthetics belonging to each place.
He flew to Vegas last week to attend the hospitality and design expo as a guest of our friend Jenny to learn more about the hospitality-end of the industry. His first-ever trade show, he had the opportunity to nerd out with professionals, discussing hand-blown Italian glass, lush and colorful wall papers, porcelain tiles, and concepts like making bold choices. He sat in on a client meeting with Jenny, and attended a panel discussion on how designers are using Pinterest. A woman at Wayfair asked his opinion of their booth layout and design. True stories.
On our way to Mandalay Bay that morning, I gave him a quick lesson on networking: be curious about people. Ask about their product. Ask if they have any career advice for you. He did all of that and more. At first, I introduced him as my nephew, and he followed my lead. Then I let him take charge while I hung back. By the end of the day, he was walking the floor on his own while Jenny and I lounged on a white sofa made in Spain.
If you are also subscribers to Why Is This Interesting?, you might have read my piece last week on Big Bear eagle parents Jackie and Shadow, whose chicks Sunny and Gizmo will soon fledge. The chicks mean so much to me in part because they’re navigating a similar stage of life as my nephew. (I hope this analogy doesn’t sound too precious.) The eaglets are preparing to fly because that is what they are born to do, but flying for the first time seems outrageous to me! They’re still babies! They play with a pinecone like it’s a toy. They crash hard, still sleeping lying down with their tiny heads resting on branches like pillows.
When my nephew and I got home from dinner after the expo, I helped him set up a free newsletter account as a possibility for keeping in touch with his new industry contacts. I thought it might be a way to share his budding design expertise and influence—after all, he already has one client-friend, a kid who asked for help decorating his first apartment. What if my nephew is an up-and-coming voice in the industry? Who’s to say. But by this time, it was getting late, and we’d had a long day, and the young man who was a better networker at age eighteen than most adults reverted to being a kid again, flopping around on my stability ball and yoga mat like a wet noodle with a coke habit while I tried to show him how Mailchimp works.
My nephew is getting ready to launch his career; others are reconciling with how the ethics and efficacy of their industries has been swept from under them. I wrote about this last week, the aging, crumbling industries and their resistance to change, including higher education, even as leadership in these fields understands their practitioners and professionals are burning out, their work is ensnared in politics and conflict, and the public is losing faith as a result. Think pieces sprout like weeds after a rain storm, but I don’t believe a failure to evolve is for want of strategy. It’s going to take deeper, more self-reflective work on the part of leadership first. It’s going to require more curiosity, humility, and an intentional investment in relationships, because we will need more trust, and authentic, sustained collaboration to cross this threshold of evolution.
Culture evolves faster than systems. It paves the way for systemic change. Simply, this. However, we assume the opposite is true. We seem to ignore that no matter how brilliant a strategy may be, it is interpreted and enacted by people, and people operate through cultural norms. The high you get off a reimagined vision? Fleeting. A designed document? A cool chart? A set of refined values? Not enough.
Consultants concentrate their services in strategy, operations, and planning because it’s easier to sell. It’s faster and more visible. Incoming executives seek quick wins with similar convictions—they revise an org chart, or shuffle responsibilities, or upgrade a software system, or launch a campaign, and all of it may look like progress! But to change how people speak to each other, or what they believe, reward, and fear, or how conflict is surfaced and resolved is slow work. It takes time. It requires self-awareness and vulnerability, and it’s tougher to measure and manage. If we plan it and structure it, the culture will catch up, or so we believe. It won’t.
Between the two ends of the spectrum, beginnings and endings, I am in conversations with others about fleeing their country. (Fleeing: I’ve never used this word in a context like this before.) They are grappling with public and government narratives that denigrate and shame their identity, label them immoral, crazy, or predatory, and deny them access and opportunity.
When you consider it like that, who wouldn’t want to leave? If that were all, if the house were engulfed in flames, the choice would not be wrenching, but it’s more nuanced than that. They’ve built fulfilling lives here—careers, communities, and a lifetime of engagement. People, vastly, daily, are collaborative and kind, creative and present, open and supporting, resistant and resisting. So, how do we hold both realities, and how do we determine whether it’s our role to leave or stay?
There’s an exercise I’ve done as a student of positive psychology that I want to share, and not because it provides answers to the weighty questions, but because I’ve found it helps clarify the inquiry. It’s a form of guided meditation in which you imagine yourself at age eighty. In this, you are healthy, vibrant, and fulfilled, having lived a life of intention and purpose.
Paint a picture with as much clarity as is useful. Notice the environment around you. What’s present? Put yourself in the scene. What do you look like? What kind of person are you? Next, turn your attention to what you’ve accomplished with your life: how have you invested your years? What’s been meaningful? What are you most proud of? Ask your eighty-year-old self to share their wisdom with you regarding the choices you’re facing today.
This isn’t unlike what I suggested my nephew do at the expo—seek advice from his elders. When I did this meditation for the first time, during the pandemic on a Zoom call with dozens of others, our realities and lives cut to the root, our cameras off so we could focus without feeling self-conscious, it helped me realize that the privilege of my life is spent in conversations of identity, purpose, and consequence. It’s incredibly meaningful to speak with individuals who’ve dedicated their lives to cultural transformation, service, and activism as artists, writers, and leaders—it’s the exploration of integrity, joy, and influence, even in the midst of upheaval and transition. Sometimes the work is to name the grief; other times, it’s about seeking discernment, rootedness, and evolution. Non-linear, messy and liminal, we explore first drafts of profound, loving, and brave evolutions. And while you can do this work alone, you bridge the gap of interiority and lived expression when it becomes a conversation.
Given all of this as context, the other day I looked up Elie Wiesel’s lecture from when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. Wiesel came to mind as someone whose message I’ve admired for its clarity, direct appeal, and hope, and I wanted to remember his story and how he spoke it. He made such an impact on me when I was very young, maybe even the age my nephew is today: “everything had to be reassessed because everything had changed.”
“We are a species that deceives. Other species deceive too, but we do it more elaborately, and we do it with stories.” — Margaret Atwood
Not too many notes this week because I was chatting up strangers at the expo! Great convos with Ben and Sasha and
— thank you.Are you a member of a nonprofit board? If so, I have a short survey here. Would love if you’d participate.