Embracing the messy grey
I am writing to you from the comfort of a shaded poolside lounge-chair. While my fingers may slip off the keys due to the excess of sunscreen that my pale skin necessitates when indulging in the Caribbean Sea and sunshine, I hope that you will excuse any typos.
Since venturing off on a little extended family vacation during my children’s spring break, I have been lucky enough to reunite with family that I don’t see nearly enough. With all of the planning and logistics and sleep schedules and diaper packing that my nearest and dearest have endured, it’s pretty blissful to chill with them and enjoy fresh seafood and vitamin D. It has been 5 years since we’ve done this sort of thing, and it is made all the more special given I live so far away from them all.
So yes, there are cooing babies and wholesome jokes and sassy comments or judgments about how we parent. There are also our famous dinner conversations, which begin very G-rated and surface level, and quickly escalate to rowdy, meaningful debates with much passion! I am challenged daily by the varying viewpoints we all hold so near to our hearts. It’s….refreshing.
Over dinner with these kind and generous and friendly and goofy people, we debate climate, energy, the economy, and any number of important but touchy subjects. Some might shy away from that but if you know me well or have been reading long enough, you know I’m game to shoot the breeze and engage in this type of conversation. Also, each of you have a family, so….you know.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I sat at the conference room table with the other executives of the tech company I was working at. We were discussing training programs for new employees, and with the hand-wavy confidence only a mid-20s gentleman could possess, one of the co-founders suggested we have a mandatory reading list of business books he believed were valuable. We should use these books to help them see our point of view, he said.
Argumentative as ever, I countered that while this is a great start to get the entire team thinking about business problems more broadly, we should also include literature and studies with a range of views, experiences, findings, and opinions to help shape an employee’s understanding of our business and industry, its history, the problems we may face moving forward, and how to approach them. We should even have books that over opposing advice or techniques in an effort to help them formulate their own position instead of drinking the cool-aid from some marketing hack who writes palatable leadership books over and over again.
It’s important to me to have been nudged in the direction of reading books I don’t necessarily agree with or that challenge my current belief system. Who am I as a human being if I cam not open to growth? What can I contribute if my curiosity melts into apathy? What if we become too tired to ask hard questions?
Who am I as a human being if I am not open to growth? What can I contribute if my curiosity melts into apathy? What if we become too tired to ask hard questions?
In our rebellious teenage years, didn’t we question rules and religion and human rights? And now in adulthood, don’t we question the patriarchy and gender roles, capitalism, consumerism, and climate, among (so so so many) others?
The questioning is also endless, even exhausting. We are all fucking tired. You subscribe to this because you know what to expect and your life is simplified in some tiny way. But promise me we won’t stop being open to new ideas!!
So, I have some bad news: I might do a bit of that questioning on occasion right here in the newsletter with you. I may include reads that are thought-provoking, perplexing, or maybe even angering for some. I will often include 2 or more opposing articles on a single topic. That might piss some of you off, and I get that, but what I hope comes for us, for this little community, to chat and shoot the breeze and debate the topics we are still learning about. It’s also important to me to read what a certain ‘wing’ of media is writing about, why they are writing about it, and how those with a specific belief system are interpreting it. In any debate, that knowledge is powerful.
It is very possible to hold opposing or different views, one in each hand, and continue to discover your own position as you evolve. While there are a few objective subjects I cannot be swayed on (abortion, for example) part of being curious means I’m always open to new information or to an opinion that has some depth to it.
When this newsletter got rolling 3 years ago, its name was For The Curious.
There are times I don’t know how I feel about a topic; I’m not educated enough, information is lacking, I haven’t had time to research or investigate further, or my opinion is simply still evolving with each conversation I have about it.
On the other hand, sometimes I have a strong, seemingly unflappable position on a subject and I honestly don’t know where it came from.
And what better place to reflect upon this idea than with a melting pot of strangers on an island in the sun? The trouble I can cause! Just add a piña colada…what could possibly go wrong?