David Bowie once said something about going a little further into the water than you feel capable of being. Go a little out of your depth. When your feet are not quite touching the bottom, you are just about in the right place to do something exciting.

That quote found me at the right time. Or maybe the wrong time.

Because let me begin here: I do not know how to swim.

Technically, I took swimming lessons. For a long time. A very long time. It took me almost two years to get my head underwater.

There were several things that happened in childhood that made water feel like danger to me. I remember taking swimming lessons as a child and having this moment where my body seemed to remember drowning. I do not know how else to describe it. It was not just fear as an idea. It was fear as memory. Fear as muscle. Fear as breath leaving before I had even gone under.

Every time I thought about submerging my head, something in me said, “You are going to die.”

So for most of my life, water was not something I had a relationship with. It was something I survived.

Eventually, I met a swimming coach named Kathleen. She was patient with me in a way that I still remember with gratitude. She did not rush me. She did not shame me. She did not treat my fear like something to overcome quickly so we could get to the real lesson.

My fear was the lesson.

For almost two years, we worked through that deep embodied belief that water was a danger to me, that I could not be in relationship with it, that I could not trust it to hold me.

And then, eventually, I got my head underwater. Then I learned to float.

Face down.

The dead man’s float, as I remember it being called.

There is something wild about that name now. Because the thing that felt like death became the posture that taught me how to be held.

When this Bowie quote landed in front of me, it hit somewhere deeper than language. It touched the part of me that has spent so much time in water doing the tiptoe-to-the-sand thing.

As long as I can feel the bottom, I am okay.

As long as my toes can press into something solid, I can breathe.

As long as my body is in contact with the ground, I can convince myself I am safe.

But the moment I cannot feel the bottom, I want to run back.

Not walk.

Run.

Back to the place where my feet touch. Back to the place where the surface is familiar. Back to the place where I can tell myself I am in control because I can feel something beneath me.

But floating taught me something that my fear still struggles to accept.

The water will hold me if I release myself into it.

This is deeply counterintuitive. The moment I tense up, I begin to sink. The moment I fight the water, my body becomes heavy. The moment I try to control being held, I make it harder for the water to do what it already knows how to do.

But when I release my body to the water, something changes.

The natural buoyancy of the body meets the natural capacity of the water.

The water holds me. And somehow, I hold the water.

In each other’s embrace, I float.

I know this because I have experienced it. I know I can float. I know I will not immediately drown. I know that with a life vest on, especially, I will be okay.

And yet, if you ask the people closest to me, I am still probably the last person jumping into the water. I am not the one excited to get on a boat where everybody plans to swim. I am not the first one to run toward the deep end.

Because knowing something is true does not always mean your body has learned to trust it.

There is still something in me that becomes deeply insecure when I am untethered from what feels like certainty.

And I think that is what Bowie was naming.

Not water, exactly.

Uncertainty.

The edge where control ends.

The place where the body can no longer perform confidence because there is nothing solid beneath it.

Which is another way of saying hello to today.

Because nothing is certain.

We know this. We say this. We nod along when someone says life is unpredictable. But most of us are still building artificial shorelines wherever we can. We create structures, strategies, routines, titles, relationships, identities, and plans that let us imagine we are standing on solid ground.

We tell ourselves these things are certainty.

But often they are only familiar.

And familiarity is not the same as safety.

This has been one of the great lessons of the past two and a half years of my life.

I remember the beginning of this creative entrepreneurship journey. I went to sleep on a Monday night worried. Concerned. Scared.

The job I had was ending. I did not know what would come next. I had been dreaming about going all the way in on coaching and consulting, but dreaming from the shoreline and stepping into the water are not the same thing.

That night, I prayed. I talked to the ancestors. I tried to listen beneath the noise of my own fear.

And when I woke up the next morning, something in me knew.

I was going to go all the way in.

That same Tuesday, there were two emails in my inbox from people inviting me to come on as a consultant. The next day, Wednesday, someone else reached out and asked if I had more capacity.

That was one of my first moments of trusting the uncertainty of what was to come.

It was me releasing myself into the water.

And the water saying, “I’ve got you.”

But even then, I could still see the shore.

That first year was about learning to get comfortable in the water. Each time a no came, a yes would appear somewhere else. Each yes helped me understand more clearly what alignment felt like in this work. Each aligned opportunity gave me a greater sense of my own natural buoyancy.

I began to understand that when I live in this way, when I move from what is true in me instead of what is expected of me, I can float in these waters.

That first year taught me something essential.

I was going to have what I needed when I needed it.

The work would hold me if I released myself to it.

What was in me was enough.

What was in me was complete.

I was built to float in these proverbial waters.

And, to be honest, you can lose yourself a little when you are floating.

I think about my father, Ron Brown, who famously fell asleep while floating one day and had to be brought back to shore because he had drifted so far out. He was so comfortable releasing himself to the water that distance happened without him noticing.

That is what this work has felt like at times.

I am floating.

I am good.

I can still see the shore.

I am further out than I was before, but not so far that I cannot orient myself.

There is still a visible relationship to what I knew.

Then, at some point, the shoreline begins to disappear. The land mass of the known gets smaller. The distance becomes real. You look around and all you see is open water.

That is when something destabilizing begins to happen.

Not because you cannot go back.

But because continuing forward means admitting you do not know where this is going.

The water here may be calm. But what about the water ahead? What happens if the waves change? What happens if the weather shifts? What happens if the thing that has held you so far is now inviting you into a different kind of movement?

That is where I am now.

Year one was about learning that the water could hold me.

Year two was about getting curious about what had been holding me. I started building frameworks. Creating structure. Naming practices. Developing a model for how I engage with people and how this work moves through the world.

And that was good. It was necessary.

But here is the danger.

If I am not careful, I can begin to believe the framework is what allows me to float.

I can begin to believe the model is what holds me.

I can begin to believe the thing I built is the source of my buoyancy.

And that is not true.

The structure is an expression of what was already present. The model is a container for what already existed.

The framework did not make me buoyant.

It helped me describe the buoyancy.

This distinction matters. Because if I begin to trust what I manufactured more than what was created in me, then I will slowly start building stability around the wrong thing.

I will begin trusting the boat more than the water.

The platform more than the presence.

The framework more than the formation.

The product more than the practice.

And if I am honest, I can feel that temptation.

The further I get from shore, the more tempting it becomes to build something that feels like land. Something that says, “Stand here.” Something that says, “This is the thing.” Something that says, “Now you can be safe.”

But I am not sure that is the invitation.

I do not think this season is asking me to recreate the shoreline.

I think this season is asking me to learn what it means to move in the water.

For a while, floating was enough. Floating was trust. Floating was release. Floating was the practice of letting myself be held by what I could not control.

But maybe now the invitation is changing.

Maybe now I am being asked to turn over and begin to swim.

That feels true.

That also feels terrifying.

Because I still really do not know how to swim.

And maybe what has kept me from swimming is not only fear of the water, but the old belief that I needed something solid beneath me before I could move.

But maybe swimming is not only about knowing the technique. Maybe swimming begins with trusting that the same water that held me while I floated will also hold me while I move.

Maybe the skill can be learned because the holding is already true.

Maybe the question is not whether the water will hold me.

Maybe the question is whether I trust myself enough to move with agency while being held.

That feels like the edge of this season.

Not just release.

Movement.

Not just floating.

Exploration.

Not just being carried.

Participating.

The last season taught me that I could release what was no longer for me. This season is asking something different.

Now that I have released, where am I willing to go?

Now that I have floated this far, what direction am I being invited to move toward?

Now that the shore is no longer visible, can I stop searching for the bottom and begin trusting the water?

I do not know where this is going. I do not know how far I will extend. I do not know what these waters will ask of me.

But I do know this: I am already too far out to pretend I am still on the shore.

Going back would be exhausting.

Not because the shore is bad.

But because I am no longer there.

And once you know you are in open water, returning to shallow ground is not always safety.

Sometimes it is refusal.

So maybe Bowie was right.

Maybe the exciting thing begins where the feet stop touching.

Maybe the creative life, the honest life, the surrendered life, the life of presence and practice, begins in that strange and sacred place where you are no longer certain, but not abandoned.

No longer grounded, but still held.

No longer in control, but still alive.

I have learned to float.

Maybe now it is time to learn to swim.

And maybe the first lesson is this:

The water will hold me.

And I will hold the water.

I turned 45 today.

Which is a strange sentence to write because I know what it means, and I am also less sure than I have ever been that I know what it means.

I could memorialize the moment with 45 lessons I have learned, but nobody needs that many bullet points from me.

I could offer 45 bars, but I do not think the people are asking me to rap right now.

I could turn 45 into some kind of word puzzle, numerology, or clever reflection on the number itself.

But instead, I will say this:

This may be my last birthday.

Now, let me be clear before anybody gets concerned.

This is not me suggesting my life is coming to an end.

This is not me prophesying the end of the world.

This is not a dramatic announcement or a coded goodbye.

It is more of a curiosity.

A question I have been sitting with for the past several months.

What is the significance of a birthday?

I understand some of it.

I know what my birthday means to my mother. Every year around this time, she remembers that a very, very large baby came from her body and that this very large baby has grown into the man she experiences today.

That matters.

There is memory there.

There is sacrifice there.

There is story there.

There is the miracle of arrival.

Astrologically, I know there is significance to the day, the season, the month, the hour, where the stars were, where the moon was, how the planets were aligned, and what the sky was holding at the time I took my first breath.

That matters too.

There is mystery there.

There is pattern there.

There is a relationship between the body and the cosmos that I do not fully understand, but I am open enough to honor.

Where I am getting curious is around what it means to be an age.

Not to have lived years.

That feels clear enough.

But to be an age.

To become identified with a number as though the number itself is now responsible for what is possible, appropriate, acceptable, delayed, foolish, wise, beautiful, or out of reach.

Several months ago, I sat with someone who told me a story about a Jamaican man who got into a car accident and lost his memory. Because he lost his memory, he forgot how old he was.

And because he forgot how old he was, he stopped living to age and started living to moment.

I think about that often.

Because people say things to me sometimes like:

“You’re too old to dress like that.”

Or:

“I thought you were much younger because of the way you present yourself.”

Or:

“Was it scary starting your own business at this point in your life?”

Or:

“At your age, there are certain things you need to be thinking about.”

And I understand some of that.

Some of it is practical.

Some of it is biological.

Some of it is connected to the body and the way the body changes.

There are screenings we should get at certain stages of life. There are realities we should be attentive to. There are ways the body asks for different kinds of care as time moves through it.

I am not dismissing that.

The body deserves our attention.

The body deserves our listening.

The body deserves our reverence.

And still, I am curious about what becomes available when age is no longer the primary marker for how we understand our lives.

What happens if I am no longer clocking age?

What happens if “too old” and “too young” are no longer the reference points for what I should or should not do?

What happens if age is no longer the deciding factor for how late I stay up, how long I sleep in, what I wear, what I create, what I listen to, where I go, what I try, what I risk, or what I imagine?

What happens if age is no longer the reason I say no to something that still feels alive in me?

I wonder about that.

Because so much gets organized around age.

What we are supposed to have accomplished by now.

What we are supposed to have outgrown by now.

What we are supposed to be too mature for.

What we are supposed to be too late for.

What we are supposed to be preparing to leave behind.

Even the way we talk about young people often reveals the way we have aged ourselves out of relationship with possibility.

We say “young people” as though we are not still becoming.

As though curiosity belongs to them.

As though risk belongs to them.

As though experimentation belongs to them.

As though wonder belongs to them.

As though some part of us has graduated from becoming and entered a stage of life where the primary task is to comment on what others are doing with theirs.

But what if we do not have to age ourselves out of aliveness?

What if we do not have to leave wonder to the young?

What if the number can be honored without becoming a cage?

A few days ago, I met a flight attendant who has been doing the work for 20 years. Twenty years in the sky. Twenty years of boarding, landing, serving, greeting, repeating, adjusting, and moving through the routines of air travel.

And still, she finds wonder in it.

Sunrises.

Sunsets.

Mountain ranges.

The ice caps over Greenland.

The way the world looks from above when light is doing what only light can do.

She has not let repetition take her wonder.

I sat next to a woman on my way to Athens who was in her 60s and told me she salsa dances everywhere she goes.

Everywhere.

Not as a memory of who she used to be.

Not as a cute thing she used to do when she was younger.

As part of who she is now.

I met an entrepreneur, also in his 60s, who was not building toward retirement, but toward the next creative venture of his life.

Not winding down.

Not disappearing.

Not handing imagination to someone younger.

Still building.

Still imagining.

Still becoming.

And I keep thinking about how many people have creative projects, books, songs, albums, businesses, paintings, films, classes, movements, relationships, journeys, conversations, and new ways of being tucked somewhere inside of them.

Not because those things are gone.

But because some voice has said:

“You’re too old for that now.”

Or:

“That season has passed.”

Or:

“It was your turn. Now it’s somebody else’s.”

But what does that even mean?

If it is still in you, let it be.

Let it breathe.

Let it move.

Let it find its season.

Everything in nature moves at its own pace.

Some trees take years before they bear fruit.

Some flowers bloom quickly.

Some roots grow quietly underground long before anything breaks the surface.

Some birds migrate.

Some stay.

Some rivers rush.

Some carve stone over time.

None of it is less itself because it does not move according to our timeline.

The tree is not ashamed because another tree fruited first.

The river is not embarrassed because it is still carving.

The flower is not apologizing for blooming late.

Nature does not clock years the way we do.

The trees, the birds, the bees, the insects, the air we breathe, the rain that falls, none of it seems to be asking, “Am I too old to become what I am becoming?”

It is all holding moments.

It is all moving through seasons.

It is all responding to what is alive.

So I am curious.

What would it look like to no longer hold years as tightly, and instead hold seasons?

To no longer organize my life around months, but around moments?

To no longer measure the day only by what I accomplished, but by what desire revealed?

To no longer clock minutes as something escaping me, but as invitations lighting the direction of where I am now?

This is not about ignoring time.

It is about refusing to be ruled by a number.

It is about honoring the fact that I have lived 45 years without allowing 45 to become a ceiling.

It is about letting the day be sacred without making the age a sentence.

And maybe this is why this may be my last birthday.

Because maybe after this, I do not need to become 46 in the way I was taught to become an age.

Maybe when July 7 comes around next year, I will not need the day to tell me what I am allowed to be.

Maybe I will still receive the love.

Maybe I will still celebrate the miracle of being alive.

Maybe I will still call my mother and honor the fact that my life began through hers.

Maybe I will still give thanks for the body, the breath, the ancestors, the friendships, the family, the work, the grief, the joy, the mystery, and the mercy that carried me here.

But maybe I will hold the number more lightly.

Maybe I will let the moment matter more than the marker.

Maybe I will let the season tell the truth.

And maybe when July 7 comes around next year, and someone asks me what the day means, I will say:

Wow.

It’s Wednesday.

And I have never had a Wednesday like this before.

That feels like enough.

Actually, it feels like more than enough.

Because what I want in this next season is not to become younger.

And it is not to perform being older.

I want to become more present.

More honest.

More available.

More willing to be surprised.

More willing to follow what is still alive in me.

More willing to stop asking whether I am too old or too young and start asking whether I am being true.

That is the bridge I am standing on today.

Between what has been and what is still becoming.

Between the years I can count and the moments I cannot contain.

Between the person I have been and the person I am still meeting.

So maybe this birthday is not an ending.

Maybe it is a threshold.

Maybe it is not my last birthday because I am done living.

Maybe it is my last birthday because I am done letting age be the primary way I measure aliveness.

Today, I am 45.

I am grateful.

I am here.

And I have never had a day like this before.

Have you ever had déjà vu?

Not just the fleeting kind where something feels vaguely familiar, but the kind that settles into your body in a way that makes you pause, that interrupts whatever forward motion you were in and quietly insists that you have been here before, that this moment is not entirely new, even if the circumstances appear different.

I’ve come to believe that these are moments of return.

Not return in the sense of going backward, but return in the sense of arriving again at something that has been waiting for you, something that has been circling back around, inviting you to meet it with a different awareness than the last time you stood in its presence.

And in those moments, I’ve learned to ask different questions.

Not “Why is this happening again?”
But “What is this inviting me to see?”

What is being revealed that I have not yet been willing to look at directly?
What is being asked of me that I have kept at the edge of my awareness, just far enough away that I could continue moving without having to respond?

I had one of those moments this week.

I was sitting across from a friend, sharing a meal, engaged in a conversation that, on the surface, felt like many others I’ve had before — stories being exchanged, reflections offered, laughter woven into the spaces between what was spoken.

And yet, something else was happening.

There was something present in that space that was not contained in the words themselves, something that existed beneath the conversation, shaping the way I was hearing what was being said.

It felt like I was being shown something.

Not through instruction.
Not through direct feedback.
But through recognition.

As I listened, I began to see a pattern.

A way that I have historically shown up.
A way of being that has served me, that has allowed me to navigate relationships and environments with a kind of steadiness that others could rely on.

And at the same time, I could feel — in a way that was undeniable — that this same pattern could no longer carry me forward into who I am becoming.

What I was being invited to release in that moment was not something external.

It was something internal.

It was the felt responsibility to create a kind of energetic stasis for the people around me, to hold a consistent baseline that allowed others to feel settled, even if that meant limiting the fullness of my own expression.

It was the subtle and often unconscious decision to adjust myself in ways that made the space more comfortable for others, even if that comfort came at the cost of something true within me.

Nothing in that conversation said this directly.

There was no moment where my friend named it, no sentence that pointed at it with clarity.

And yet, everything about that moment carried the invitation.

It was as if the space itself was speaking.

When I left that meal, I had the distinct feeling that I had not just been in conversation with another person.

I had been in conversation with myself.

And what I walked away with was not advice or instruction, but something quieter and more demanding.

A decision point.

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In 1981, the English punk band The Clash released a song titled Should I Stay or Should I Go, and while it was written in a very specific context, the question it asks has a way of echoing far beyond the moment in which it was created, showing up in places that are far quieter and far more personal than the song itself might suggest.

Because when you sit with it long enough, you begin to realize that this question is not confined to relationships or singular decisions.

It is a question that lives in all things.

Should I stay… or should I go?

What I have come to understand is that this question does not arrive once and then disappear.

It returns.

Again and again.

And each time it returns, it brings with it a familiar feeling, even if the circumstances appear different, a kind of recognition in the body that says, you have been here before.

I no longer experience time as a straight line.

Not because I reject the idea of progression, but because linear time does not fully explain why we encounter the same emotional and relational moments across different seasons of our lives, why we find ourselves standing in what feels like a new situation, only to realize that the internal experience is deeply familiar.

So I have begun to experience life as a series of returns.

Not arriving at something entirely new, but returning to something known, something that asks something of me again, but from a different place within myself.

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The hardest part about realizing a space no longer fits is not the moment of awareness itself, but the quiet and often unspoken recognition that even after you know it, even after you feel it in your body with a clarity that is difficult to deny, you are still, in subtle and persistent ways, trying to make it work anyway.

There is a space between knowing and moving that can stretch far longer than we would like to admit, a space where awareness has already taken root but action has not yet followed, and in that space, we begin to negotiate with what we already understand to be true, convincing ourselves that perhaps the discomfort is temporary, that perhaps the misalignment can be adjusted, that perhaps if we just shift a few things around us, we can continue to remain where we are.

I have lived in that space more times than I can count, and when I sit with it honestly, I can trace its origins back to places in my life where making something work was not simply a preference but a necessity, where the environments around me were fixed in ways that did not account for my needs, and the only available response was to adapt, to adjust, to find a way to move within what could not be changed.

I remember, in ways that still feel present in my body, walking to school in shoes that had worn all the way through, where the sole no longer existed as a barrier between my feet and the ground, and when it rained, the water would seep through the bottom and into my socks, and instead of naming that as discomfort or lack, I learned to transform the experience into something I could hold more easily, turning it into a game that I called “squish, squash, squish,squash,” because if I could make it playful, I could make it livable.

I remember standing in winter with a coat that had thinned over time, its ability to hold warmth diminished by years of wear, and instead of acknowledging the cold that was pressing against my body, I would repeat to myself, over and over again, that I was not cold, that I was fine, that I could endure it, because the alternative required a kind of vulnerability that was not available to me at the time.

These moments were not isolated; they formed a pattern, and that pattern became a way of being, a learned response that taught me how to survive within environments that were not designed to adjust for me, and over time, that survival strategy evolved into something that looked like strength, something that looked like resilience, something that allowed me to move through spaces with a kind of adaptability that others would often name as a gift.

And in many ways, it was.

It allowed me to become someone who could navigate multiple worlds, who could shift my cadence, my posture, my presence depending on where I was and who I was with, who could operate in environments that ranged from corporate offices to street corners without losing the ability to function, who could take what was given and find a way to make it work, even when it did not naturally fit.

But what I did not understand at the time was that the very ability that allowed me to survive in those environments would later become the thing that made it difficult to recognize when a space was no longer aligned for me.

Because when making it work becomes your default response, you stop asking whether it should.

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I recently returned to a place I had been before, a place that, by all external measures, had not changed in any significant way, where the programming was the same, the structure was familiar, and the rhythm of the experience followed a pattern that my body had learned long ago how to move through without much conscious effort, and yet, despite all of that continuity, the way I experienced it this time was entirely different.

There was a distance I could feel but could not immediately name, something subtle but persistent that sat just beneath the surface of every interaction, as if I were present in the space but no longer fully participating in it in the way that I once had, and as the experience unfolded, I began to notice something that has become a signal for me over time, a kind of internal shift that is easy to overlook if I am not paying close attention.

I began to slip into critique.

Not loudly, not in a way that would draw attention or disrupt the environment around me, but internally, there was a steady current of noticing, of questioning, of evaluating what was landing and what was no longer resonating in the same way, and over time, I have come to understand something about myself that has proven to be consistently true.

When I become critical of a thing, it is rarely because the thing itself has changed.

It is because I have.

And the thing is no longer for me.

There is a moment, though, before that realization is fully accepted, a moment that lives in the body before it becomes language, where something begins to tighten or shift in a way that cannot yet be explained, and for me, that moment often feels like a subtle restlessness in my chest and shoulders, like I am holding something in place that is already trying to move, like there is a quiet misalignment between where I am and what I am becoming.

And in that moment, the question begins to form.

Not as a clear thought, but as a feeling that gradually becomes words.

Should I stay… or should I go?

I have seen this pattern emerge in many areas of my life, not just in physical spaces but in relationships, roles, and environments that once felt aligned, where everything on the surface appeared to remain the same, and yet my internal experience of those spaces began to shift in ways that I could not ignore.

And when that shift happens, my first instinct is rarely to leave.

My first instinct is to adjust.

To reshape the space.

To refine what feels off.

To influence the environment in ways that might allow me to remain.

Because if the space can change, then I do not have to.

This is not a small thing for me.

I am someone who finds comfort in familiarity, in the predictability of patterns that allow me to settle without having to constantly renegotiate my place within them, and I can see this in the smallest details of my life, in the way I return to the same meals, the same spaces, the same routines, not out of limitation but out of a desire for grounding.

So when something that has become familiar begins to feel like it no longer fits, it does not simply disrupt my preference.

It disrupts my sense of stability.

And that is where the tension begins.

Because part of me knows that something has shifted, that something in me has moved in a way that no longer aligns with what once felt natural, and another part of me is trying to hold everything in place, to preserve what has been, to maintain the relationship between who I was and where I have been.

This is what awareness does.

It does not always bring immediate clarity about what to do next, but it brings an undeniable clarity about what is no longer true, and that clarity has a way of complicating things, because it removes the illusion that everything can be made to fit if we are willing to try hard enough.

It introduces a different way of knowing.

One that is not based on right or wrong, good or bad, but on alignment.

On what fits and what no longer does.

And from that place, something becomes clear.

Not every space is for us.

And every space that once was will not always remain so.

Especially if we are still becoming.

But instead of honoring that, we often resist it.

We attempt to negotiate with what has already shifted.

We try to reshape what is no longer meant to hold us.

We search for ways to remain in places that no longer meet who we are.

Because leaving requires stepping into the unknown.

And the unknown is uncomfortable.

The mind responds to that discomfort in predictable ways.

It begins to create stories, to construct futures that feel more certain than the present, to imagine outcomes that provide a sense of stability, even if they are entirely built from assumption rather than reality.

Because even imagined certainty feels safer than not knowing.

So we stay.

Not because the space is aligned.

But because the alternative feels undefined.

But awareness has a way of returning us to the present.

It brings us back into the body, back into the moment, back into what is actually being experienced rather than what could be imagined, and in that return, the question becomes unavoidable.

Not “How do I make this work?”

But “Why am I still trying to?”

Because making something work is not the same as being in alignment with it.

And at some point, the cost of staying becomes impossible to ignore, not because it presents itself dramatically, but because it accumulates quietly, moment by moment, until we can nolonger pretend that what we are holding in place is meant to remain.

This is the gift of emergence.

Not that it makes the path forward easier.

But that it makes what is true impossible to overlook.

I have three rose bushes planted near the walkway into our home.

Two bloom red.
One blooms white — sometimes pink.

Every year, they bloom the same colors.

And every year, because we trim them back in winter, when they bloom again there is a feeling of newness.

New petals.
New fragrance.
New shape.

And yet —

Nothing new at all.

They are not becoming something different.
They are returning to what they have always been.

Spring does not dictate what a rose is.

It reveals it.

Emergence doesn’t invent identity.
It uncovers it.

I’m learning this about myself.

The more curious I become about what I’ve been designed to be,
the easier it is to follow the path of emergence.

Last year, I moved differently.

I was preoccupied with building a profitable business in the pattern of what I believed profitable businesses should look like.

I listened to the podcasts.
I attended the conferences.
I studied the formulas.

Build the funnel.
Scale the offer.
Monetize the brand.
Manufacture the structure.

The self-help industry in the United States alone was valued around $16 billion in 2024. Sixteen billion dollars spent on becoming more.

The “Wellness” industry at large was even greater! The US spent so much in 2024 that the equivalent would be giving two dollars for every human on earth.

A global preoccupation with arrival.

With the idea that something out there will make you more of who you are.

But life — like everything in creation — isn’t about arrival.

It’s about return.

It’s a circle.

I am not arriving at a new version of myself.

I am returning to a deeper understanding of who I have always been.

And the more I return,
the more of me becomes available to the world around me.

I am uniquely different from every other human being.

And at the same time, I am the same.

My ancestry.
My DNA.
The stories carried in my body.

They shape this particular strand of human.

That doesn’t make me better.

It makes me specific.

It means I grow best in certain contexts.

It means my becoming has texture and timing.

And understanding that is not a pursuit of “next.”

It’s a return to “now.”

That is emergence personified.

Emergence is remembering.

Emergence is witnessing what has always been within you.

When I return to myself, I reconnect to source — however you define it.

God.
Energy.
Creative intelligence.

Source exists only here.

Now.

And when I draw from that, I experience something different from manufacturing.

The organic gives as it receives.

When I bloom from presence,
what I give returns in reciprocity.

Like the pollinator drawing from the flower
and carrying that bloom to the next.

Interdependence.

Collective flourishing.

No competition.

No scarcity.

Just becoming.

When I stay near that rhythm, something shifts.

The hum of the machine quiets.

Stillness becomes profound.

Each moment becomes teacher.

Each encounter becomes invitation.

There is play.

There is peace.

There is presence.

It feels like walking through a field of wildflowers —
moving like a butterfly,
experimenting,
learning,
gathering,
becoming.

But let me be honest.

This season is not light.

There is loss in my family.

There is strife in community.

There is noise in our country and across the world.

The temptation is real —
to build shelters.
To construct counter-machines.
To manufacture protection in response to manufactured harm.

But when we respond to the manufactured by building more machinery,
we only feed it.

We give it the energy it needs to survive.

The greater response is slower.

Witness first within yourself:

What is organic?
What is manufactured?

Develop that filter internally.

Then use it externally.

Because that which is manufactured will not outlast what is alive.

What is made can be dismantled.

What is alive continues becoming.

This doesn’t make me indifferent.

It makes me intentional.

It allows me to move without urgency but with depth.

Without drama but with presence.

At times that can look unbothered.

But it is not dismissal.

It is discernment.

I am not here to maintain a machine.

I am here to steward what is alive.

And I am alive.

You do not interrogate it daily for progress.

You trust its design.

True north works the same way.

It does not require you to force momentum.

It requires you to listen.

When I drift, I feel it.

Drift feels like fatigue.

Drift feels like performing.

Drift feels like chasing outcomes in order to secure identity.

Certainty says,

“Once you get there, you can rest.”

Orientation says,

“Rest here.”

True north is not dramatic.

It is subtle.

It is felt in the body before it is articulated in language.

When I am aligned with true north, my pace steadies.

My voice deepens.

My decisions feel proportionate instead of reactive.

I am not scrambling to prove.

I am not scanning for applause.

I am not measuring myself against someone else’s horizon.

I am walking.

Steadily.

There is energy in that kind of alignment.

Not adrenaline.

Not urgency.

Steady energy.

It does not depend on who is watching.

It does not collapse when something does not land.

It is sustainable.

Being drawn but not pulled means I get to become without proving.

Living embodied and guided requires trusting that I am complete — not perfected, not finished, but complete in this moment.

When I say, “I am the way,” I do not mean that I am the destination.

I mean that the presence of who I am is already directing me toward who I am becoming.

The path is not outside of me.

The design is not elsewhere.

Like the seed.

Like the tide.

Like the turning of seasons.

It unfolds.

The practice is not chasing the horizon.

It is walking in alignment

with what I carry.

Again.

And again.

I once sat beneath a oak tree in New Orleans.

Scattered across the ground were acorns.

And I remember thinking how wild it is that one of these — just one — might find itself positioned in such a way, maybe picked up by a squirrel, buried and forgotten, only to break through the soil years later as an oak.

What are the odds?

How many of these acorns never become trees —
yet still serve?

Some nourish the soil.
Some feed the animals.
Some decompose and return their energy to the earth.

None are wasted.

All are in service.

All are interdependent.

All are participating in something larger than themselves.

And none of them are performing.

Sitting there, I realized something humbling.

At best, my relationship to that acorn is stewardship.

I cannot add to it to make it more oak.

I cannot improve its blueprint.

I can steward the space it grows in.
I can co-create an environment where it thrives.

But I cannot make it more of what it already is.

And it cannot make me more of what I already am.

That changes everything.

If it is true for the acorn, it is true for me.

Everything that will ever be
already lives within.

Blooming is not performance.

Blooming is a byproduct of being.

The oak does not compete to become.

It becomes because it is.

Which means I don’t have to compete to become either.

There is enough.

There is timing.

There is inevitability in the revelation of self.

And I don’t get to dictate that timing.

I only get to witness it.

Something else is true for the acorn, the oak, and me.

When grounded in the present moment, we all have access to source.

Call it God.
Call it energy.
Call it evolutionary intelligence.

However you define it —

Source only exists now.

If you’d like to keep walking this path together, the reflection continues below.

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There was a time I considered myself a high-functioning machine.

I would say things like:

“I won’t be outworked.”
“People may be more talented, but they won’t out-hustle me.”
“Difficult takes a day. Impossible takes a week.”

Jay-Z in my headphones.
Grind in my bloodstream.

I built an identity around production.

Performance was proof.

And let me tell you — it felt good.

It felt good to outwork people.
It felt good to outperform people.
It felt good to be at the top of the game.

It felt good to have people look at me and say,
“That’s the standard.”

Even resentment felt good.

Because they were still looking.

Their gaze became fuel.
Or so I thought.

I believed being seen for how hard I worked would fill something inside me.

But here’s the truth:

What came from the outside could never fuel what lived on the inside.

It felt good to be busy.
It felt good to be needed.
It felt good to build systems that helped other people perform and produce.

We built machines that allowed others to perform and produce.
And then rewarded them for their production.

Produce. Perform. Produce. Perform.

But the machine has a flaw.

It cannot return what it takes.

It extracts without reciprocity.

It promises to take your passion, your vision, your energy —
and in exchange, give you the version of yourself you believe you’re missing.

More complete.
More enough.
More worthy of being held.

But here’s the trick:

Everything it promises to give
was already true.

The machine doesn’t create wholeness.

It distracts you from it.

And it feels good while you’re inside it.

Because as long as you are producing,
as long as you are performing,
as long as you are being seen —

you receive affirmation.

Affirmation that temporarily patches the deficits you believe are there.

If you’d like to keep walking this path together, the reflection continues below.

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When I stepped outside this morning, the birds were louder than usual.

It’s February.
It’s cold.
It does not feel like spring.

And yet, there was a knowing in their song.

A knowing that defies the calendar.
A knowing rooted not in what is scheduled —
but in what is emerging.

The birds begin.

Then the weeds push through the soil — the very ground we thought we had cleared in the previous season.

Then the shoots from the rose bushes in the front yard.

Then the yellow blossoms from the neighboring tree.

Then the buds forming on the maple branches.

And before I know it, spring is in full bloom.

It feels sudden.

And at the same time gradual.

Fast.

And at the same time intentional.

Spring isn’t waiting to happen.
It has been happening the entire time.

My witnessing is what allows it to be seen.

There’s something sacred about watching emergence as it unfolds —
not rushing past what it will become,
not measuring it against what it used to be,
but gripping each moment as distinct.

Defined.

Worthy of wonder.

That’s the gift spring gives me.

And in truth, it’s the gift winter makes possible.

What felt dormant was never dead.
Energy was being stored.
Roots were deepening.
Preparation was underway.

Now that stored energy redirects.

Color breaks through ground.
Brilliance rises from beneath what looked barren.

And the birds — the choir — sing not as performance,
but as invitation.

A call to remember.
A call to return.
A call to witness.

Nature is a generous teacher.

It blooms and shares.
Pollinators carry what is given and multiply it.
The maple casts shade so what is beneath it can thrive.
It gives as it receives.

It does not beg to be validated.
It does not perform to prove its worth.

It simply is.

And it continues becoming —
whether we notice or not.

The organic gives life in a way the manufactured never has.

Manufactured things must be maintained.

They extract energy.
They reward productivity over presence.
They demand building and building and building —
until there is nothing left to give.

And when you are spent, the machine replaces you.

It grows only if you keep feeding it.

It never returns what it takes.

This is the tension I feel in this season.

The organic —
interdependent, intentional, reciprocal.

And the manufactured —
churning, mechanical, loud.

One calls me inward.
The other tempts me outward.

“If you produce more, you can have more.”
“If you have more, you can produce more.”

A circle that never ends.

Until I stop building.

Until I return to the cradle of creation.

As winter shifts toward spring, I know what is emerging from me.

I also know what is trying to recruit me.

The cost of building what extracts far outweighs anything it promises to give.

So I’ll ask you what I’m asking myself:

What is emerging in you right now?

And what have you built that has never returned what it asked of you?

I once followed an arrow on a New York City street just because I could.

No rationale.
No destination.
Just curiosity pulling my feet forward.

Another time, I waited—patiently—in a museum to photograph an old-growth tree. No hurry.
No anxiety.
No internal negotiation about what I should be doing instead.

I could only be where I was.

You can’t outrun now.
It doesn’t chase you.
It simply remains.

Those moments taught me something simple and quietly radical:

I don’t have to everything.
I get to everything.

That distinction changed the texture of my life.

Escape, I’ve learned, is driven by fear, scarcity, and ego.
It’s strategic.
Outcome-bound.
Performance-based.

Even when it looks productive, escape is still a flight from presence.

Wandering is something else entirely.

Wandering is intentional without being rigid.
Experimental without needing proof.
Playful without apology.

It doesn’t ask, Where is this going?
It asks, What is alive right here?

Wandering doesn’t promise arrival.
It offers presence instead.

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I’m a cerebral person.

For a long time, I believed that if I could figure something out, I could execute it. If I could understand it, I could endure it. If I could name it, I could master it.

That belief carried me far. It also quietly narrowed my world.

What I learned—slowly, stubbornly—is that brilliance can be constrained by a contracted vessel. Insight doesn’t automatically equal capacity. Clarity doesn’t guarantee sustainability.

For years, I celebrated how well I could function dysfunctionally. Six hours of sleep. Long days. Full calendars. Hustle dressed up as devotion.

I mistook endurance for alignment. Output for aliveness.

Then something shifted—not all at once, but unmistakably.

In a role that no longer fit who I was becoming, my body spoke first. Not in words. In symptoms.

Exhaustion. Restlessness. Overindulgence. A low-grade hum of agitation that no amount of thinking could resolve.

My mind tried to keep up appearances. Rationalized. Reframed. Pushed through.

But the body doesn’t negotiate with stories.

Eventually, my mind caught up to what my body had been saying all along. This wasn’t a motivation problem. It wasn’t a discipline problem. It was a listening problem.

The shift wasn’t my body aligning with my mind. It was my mind learning—finally—to listen to my body.

What changed wasn’t my mindset—it was my relationship to my body. The remainder of this piece explores what happened when I stopped arguing with sensation.

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When you stop moving at the pace of expectation, predictability dissolves.

People can no longer say,
“I know you’ll always…”
“I can count on you to…”

What emerges instead is presence.

For a long time, my relationships were shaped by an unspoken agreement:
If I perform, I can trust.
If I can trust, I can belong.
If I belong, my life has meaning.

When that agreement began to dissolve, some connections changed.

There was a friend I had co-labored with for years—deep community work, shared purpose. When I entered a new phase of life, the tether loosened. I found myself working to maintain the connection past its season. Texting. Checking in. Trying to preserve something that was quietly asking to become different.

There was comfort in the familiarity.
And exhaustion in the maintenance.

Release created relief.
And space.

Not disappearance.
Not rejection.
Room.

Some people acclimated to who I was becoming.
Others didn’t.

The difference wasn’t care.
It was whether the relationship was transactional or human.

When we try to sustain what’s past its need, we manufacture connection. And everything manufactured must be maintained.

That’s exhausting.

Freedom didn’t cost me belonging.
It clarified where belonging lived.

Sometimes what remains isn’t what we expected.
But it’s what’s real.

Release isn’t abandonment.
It’s honesty.

There was a long time when I thought explanation was something we did for other people.
To make our choices make sense.
To soften our edges.
To earn permission.

What I’ve learned is that explanation usually starts much closer to home.

We justify ourselves to ourselves first.

We build a case before we act.
We wait until the timing feels defensible.
We call this responsibility.

But responsibility is often a displacement for desire.

I learned that early. Growing up amid relational instability and economic uncertainty, wanting something had to be weighed. Deferred. Explained. Survival required logic before motion. And so I learned that if something mattered, it needed justification before it deserved movement.

That lesson followed me.

Qualifications.
Credentials.
Experience.
Timing.
Relationships.

If this reflection is stirring something in you, the habit of waiting, the need to explain desire before honoring it, the rest of this piece explores what happened when I stopped waiting, and what became available once intention led.

Then: Continue reading by subscribing below

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There’s a moment that comes after the chrysalis and after the drying of the wings —
a moment when the air is ready to hold you, but you’re not sure if you can trust it.

This is the moment of flight.
The moment when everything you’ve known about yourself must yield to what you’ve become.

For the butterfly, this is instinct.
It doesn’t need lessons or evidence.
It doesn’t remember crawling on its belly — it simply spreads what has grown and moves through air as though it has always known how.

But for us, it’s not that easy.

Because until now, all our data has told us we’re creatures of the ground.
We crawl. We climb. We make progress by friction and effort.
Nothing in our past has told us we could fly — and yet, here we are, emerging with wings.

And so much of learning to fly isn’t about technique.
It’s about release.

To fly means to let go of what was once true but no longer relevant.
The stories that shaped you were not lies — they were simply for another season.
You were a crawler once. You needed that strength. You needed to know how to move low and stay close to the earth. But that story can’t define this moment.

Now the invitation is different:
To trust what’s within you enough to respond to what’s possible.

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Most people think transformation happens in clean stages —
the chrysalis closes, the wings emerge, the butterfly rises.

But the truth is far messier, far more human.

There’s a stretch between the moment the chrysalis dissolves
and the moment the wings lift into the air
that rarely gets talked about.

A space where you’re no longer who you were,
but not yet who you’re becoming.

If this is your first time reading my words, let me offer a grounding:
the chrysalis is the cocooned middle —
that season of dissolving and unlearning,
where the old shape melts into something unrecognizable.

And after that comes the drying of the wings —
a necessary pause where what has formed internally
learns to hold itself externally.

But there’s a moment between drying and flight —
a vulnerable, suspended moment —
that isn’t glamorous or obvious.
It’s quiet.
It’s delicate.
It’s where I’ve been living.

And for those of you journeying with me,
this is the part of the story I haven’t fully shared.

Naming the In-Between

These past weeks — honestly, these past couple of years —
the in-between has lived in my body as a soft tension.
Not stress.
Not fear.
Just the quiet pull between what is and what will be.

It feels like standing in new wings that haven’t yet proven themselves
but already feel more like me than anything I’ve ever worn.

And what’s surprised me most
is the ease I’ve found in this liminal space.
The strange comfort of surrendering to something unnamed,
trusting that whatever emerges next
will be both me and for me.

I’ve slowed down.
I’ve become unrushed.
I’ve learned to sit with people and offer them the fullness of my presence
because I’m not measuring myself against the next moment.
The now has become enough.

The Quiet Cost of Emergence

But every transformation has its price.

When I led an organization,
my name moved through rooms before I did.
Eyes looked for me, listened for me, expected things from me.

Stepping into this new season —
one shaped by coaching, reflection, and deeper presence —
meant stepping out of the spotlight I once occupied.

The quiet cost of this season
was losing the identity that once gave me visibility
and the benefits that visibility brought.

It meant no longer being the headline.
No longer being the one people checked for.
No longer being who I once was
so I could make space for who I’m becoming.

And yet…
the unexpected gift has been discovering how much more I can hear myself
when the world stops applauding.

The Tender Work of Becoming

The part of me needing the most compassion
has been the part that misses knowing.

I used to future-cast easily —
anticipate what was coming.
Design the outcome.
Point to a finish line and start running.

But this season refuses to let me skip ahead.

Now, I’m learning to trust one moment at a time.
To honor the truth that I don’t know where this is going —
and I’m not meant to.

The not knowing is tender.
It asks for softness I didn’t know I had.
It asks me to stay in my wings
before I test them against the sky.

And in that tenderness,
I’ve been held —
by the people who truly see me,
by the serendipities that arrive without announcement,
by creation itself whispering, you’re right where you’re supposed to be.

Finding New Ground Inside Myself

As I’ve settled into this in-between,
I’ve noticed something new forming within me.
A calm that isn’t manufactured.
A peace that isn’t earned.
An intuitive clarity that rises without effort.

It’s as if the more present I become,
the more vivid my inner world grows —
and the clearer I can feel the energy, the intuition,
the truth of what wants to emerge.

These moments feel like glimpses of new wings.
Not the flight itself,
but evidence of what those wings will one day carry.

What I Want You to Know

If you’re new here,
this is where you’re meeting me —
mid-transition,
mid-learning,
mid-emergence.

If you’ve been here,
you may recognize the rhythm —
the dissolving,
the drying,
and now this honest, suspended pause before flight.

I’m not writing from hindsight.
I’m writing from the middle.
From inside the wings that haven’t yet lifted
but are no longer drying either.

And if there’s one truth I’m willing to say out loud,
even though it scares me a little,
it’s this:

I don’t know exactly who I’m becoming,
but I’m grateful that I am.
And you’re watching that Becoming unfold in real time.

I’ve let go of who I was on purpose
so I could discover who I am on purpose.

And as I discover,
the next part of the journey is beginning to call —
a season not of dissolving,
not of drying,
but of trusting what has grown.

Soon enough,
it will be time for something new:

Releasing to the wind
and learning to fly.

Every spring, my wife orders the butterfly kit.
A clear plastic cup arrives in the mail, filled with caterpillars and a layer of food at the bottom. They eat. They grow. And after a few days, they crawl to the top of the cup, attach themselves to the lid, and hang there — still, suspended, wrapped in the mysterious safety of a chrysalis.

We move the lid into the little mesh enclosure and wait. And then, like clockwork, one by one, they emerge. Their wings wet and heavy. Not yet ready for flight.

There’s something about that moment that stops me every year — that fragile pause between emergence and flight. They’ve become what they were meant to be, but they’re not yet capable of being it. They just hang there, wings soft and dripping with the memory of confinement, while the air around them begins to do its quiet work of drying.

And all around them, others are at different stages of becoming.
Some still sealed in their cocoons. Some testing the air. Some already lifting into motion.

It’s beautiful — and a little disorienting — to witness that contrast.

Because this is how becoming works in our lives too.
We emerge at different times, in different ways, and at different paces. Some of us are drying our wings while others are already in the air. Some of us are still learning to trust that what we’ve become is enough to take flight.

And that’s where the human challenge begins.

When we witness someone else soaring while our own wings are still wet, it can be hard not to rush the process. We start to compare, to mimic, to mold our journey after someone else’s. We confuse adjacency for alignment. We watch others’ flight patterns and think that maybe, if we flap like them, we’ll reach the same heights.

But that’s not how emergence works.

The timing of your unfolding is not a mistake.

You’re reading the public reflection.
What follows moves from metaphor into practice — how this truth shows up in our leadership, our pace, and the way we build culture around becoming.

If this rhythm resonates, I’d love for you to join us in the ecosystem of becoming.

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Every spring, the butterfly kit arrives — a small cup of caterpillars and a thin layer of food.
They eat. They grow. They wander the edges of their small plastic world.

And then, one day, they climb to the top and begin to wrap themselves in stillness.

We watch them, day after day.
Hanging there. Motionless.
Becoming something we can’t see.

And then, suddenly — they emerge.
Wings wet. Bodies trembling.
They rest at the threshold, waiting for the air to teach them how to fly.

There’s something about that quiet middle — that space between what was and what will be — that speaks to every one of us.
Because at some point, we all find ourselves there.

The Middle

The chrysalis is not punishment.
It’s not failure or pause.
It’s protection — a container that holds the work of re-formation.

We tend to treat stillness like something to escape.
But transformation often begins with surrender.

In the middle, everything familiar dissolves.
The shape that carried us this far no longer fits.
We stop moving, not because we’re broken, but because motion can’t carry us where becoming will.

You can’t climb your way into flight.
You have to dissolve into it.

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If you’ve found meaning here, consider becoming a subscriber to continue reading — where we explore what it means to truly live the middle, and how to carry presence through re-formation.*

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Waiting for the school bus on the very first day of school is no small thing. For my mother, though, it was memorable for a different reason. As she tells it, that morning confirmed for her that my sharp tongue would be both a shield and a sword in the face of the playground inevitability: bullies.

I was born pigeon-toed, my feet turned inward in a way that has always drawn more attention than I ever wanted. By six years old, it was already obvious that kids would seize on it as a target. And sure enough, on that inaugural bus stop morning, another child pointed and blurted out in the piercingly honest—and unmistakably cruel—way that only a six-year-old can: “What is wrong with your feet?”

Without hesitation, my reply came sharp and quick: “What is wrong with your hair?”

The boy had fiery red hair, bright enough to make him stand out before he ever opened his mouth. It was the easiest counterpunch available, and I took it. The attention shifted, the sting subsided, and the balance of power returned to me.

The lesson was simple: to beat the bully, become the bigger bully. And while that worked for a child on the cusp of his first day of school, we all know how that same logic scales up in adulthood. It becomes the seedbed of conflicts between people, communities, and nations. The strategy of retaliation grows from schoolyards to boardrooms, from neighborhood disputes to international politics. Wherever there is a fight, the winner doesn’t just get the last word—they often get the privilege of holding the pen that memorializes the moment. And when the pen is wielded with force, the hero’s journey begins not with courage but with conquest.

Today, the pen has been digitized into the social media post, the thread, the hot take. Every insult, every clapback, every rallying cry is shared into a cavern where opposing sides rarely meet. Each like or retweet becomes a shout into the void, an echo chamber of affirmation. What is gained is the comfort of knowing we are not alone. What is lost is the fragile, essential space where reconciliation might take root.

To be clear, harm is real. Words wound. Systems oppress. People betray. But here’s where nature offers a quiet wisdom.

In the Pacific Northwest where I grew up, stinging nettles are common. Brush against them and your skin will burn and itch for hours. Yet, those same nettles are rich in nutrients used for teas and medicines that nourish the body, they can help support immune function, improve digestion and promote bone health. And nearby, more often than not, grows the bracken fern. Rub its fronds on the irritated skin and the sting begins to fade. The irritant and the antidote, living side by side.

If we only see the nettle as a danger, our impulse might not only be to rip it from the forest floor, eliminating both the sting and the possibility of sustenance but also overlook the nearby fern which holds within it the ability to ease our pain. If we can hold the paradox—that the same plant that wounds can also nourish, and that healing is often waiting close to the harm—then we gain not just relief, but wisdom.

So what does this mean for us when the sting comes not from a nettle, but from a family member’s harsh words, a friend’s betrayal, a stranger’s prejudice, or even a system of oppression?

Could it mean that alongside the sting, there is always the potential for remedy? That the possibility of healing, while not always obvious or immediate, is rarely far away.

Perhaps our work is not simply to retaliate against the sting, but to look for the fern, the unexpected balm that eases our pain and makes space for reconciliation so that we may see within the nettle what is true within all of us; the ability to nurture coupled with the inevitability of causing harm.

If the first day of school taught me that a quick retort could quiet the source of the sting. The years since have taught me something else: healing isn’t found in becoming the louder voice, the sharper edge. It is found in trust—that where harm appears, healing waits nearby, and that even the place of our pain may hold the sustenance we need for today.

My elementary school playground was a masterclass in social hierarchies. The captains, always the most athletic or popular kids, would stand on either side of the field, their eyes scanning the eager crowd. Then came the choosing, a slow, public roll call of desirability. The best players went first—the kid who could kick a ball to the horizon, the one with lightning speed, the one who could catch anything thrown their way. With each name called, the group of us waiting shrank, and the unspoken rules of the game became clearer.

As the numbers dwindled, the choice became less about skill and more about necessity. You were no longer being picked for what you could do, but because the captain literally had no one else left to choose. That’s when it would happen. The moment the game of kickball stopped being a game and started being a performance.

Before that moment, for me, the game was pure play. A space where the energy of my body and the bounds of my imagination could run wild. The objective was simple: kick the ball, run the bases, and have fun. The rules were a loose suggestion, and the outcome of the game was almost an afterthought. The motivation was curiosity—how far could I kick it today? What happens if I try to slide into home base? The joy was in the play, not the outcome of the game.

But as a child, being picked last was a profound message. It was a clear signal that I was a liability, not an asset. The game's unspoken rules had changed, and my role was no longer to play, but to perform.

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