Redemption

I’m back in my chair, coffee having been consumed, and I am reviewing photos from the past weekend. Along with taking a class around monochrome photography, I’m attempting to work my way through the art that is both digital and analogue. This involves people, places, things, and ideas I wouldn’t normally throw together into the same mix. That being said, it’s been an ongoing revelation.

I want to talk about redemption today. I want to talk about the reality of changing what once was into something different, more adaptable, more different than what once was. This redemption isn’t religious, though you’d be forgiven if you felt I was going to go there. No, this redemption is the story of us, of how we as humans become something different.

Over the past several months, both Emma and I have walked through planning our next great adventures. This has involved interviews, document preparations, deep thinking on topics we’d ideally love never to discuss again, and various permutations of “what ifs.” I’ve written about them a lot, both here and copied over at Medium, and they’ve been received in the spirit intended. But through each of these posts, the one subject (amongst many, I assure you) that hasn’t been dealt with from my end is that of redemption.

Many years ago, I was a manager of a global team. I loved every minute of it and understood my role to be caring for and feeding the people who worked with me in my organization. While I was diligent with those in direct view, I wasn’t with my peers and my supervisors. I believed that I knew better, operated better, and was better than them, and this, ultimately, was my undoing. For all the head knowledge I had, I lost the heart behind it.

Being humbled by circumstance and by inevitability isn’t lovely. It doesn’t feel like an appropriate response to whatever you’ve done. It’s akin to being lashed with a cat-o-nine tail for stealing an apple, not for plundering a village. It seems remarkably skewed towards capital punishment versus a slap on the wrist, but it accomplishes one key attribute: humility. Of course, not everyone takes their lashing sitting down. Some spit fire right back, attacking the unfortunates and the people in line for that next bit of the success pie. They weave stories about being stabbed in the back, about how their misfortune is someone else’s problem, and so on. In each case, they’re doomed to repeat the same cycle because they’ve not learned that their humility should drive them, not their hubris.

Having experienced a bit of existential dread about how I’d provide for my kids under the heavy weight of a divorce decree, child support, and health care, I was blessed to land on my feet at my current employer. But even there, I needed to be shown that I wasn’t the top dog; my passion for technology didn’t make me better than those who orbited above me in the org chart. Humility still needed to lash itself across my shoulders, and it did.

Being passionate or knowledgeable about something or another can present itself in many ways. In ideal circumstances, it’s a gentle conveyance, a warm breeze filling the sails of those you run across. In less-than-ideal circumstances, it’s a hurricane, ripping and shredding the sails and terrifying the people nearby. What you’d hope would be seen as wisdom could easily be perceived as contempt, and let me tell you, that’s a harsh lesson to learn when it comes from an SVP.

Regardless of all these events, or perhaps because of them, I’ve been working on my story of redemption. I have been coaching, mentoring, and teaching people to be proud of who they are and what they’ve done with their lives. I’ve tried to always highlight the beauty of who they are, from culture to conveyance, and work within the stories they’ve written from themselves. It’s not a humble brag by any stretch because, as I’ve taught others, I’ve been learning about myself similarly. I’ve found a voice that’s crying for meaningfulness and redemption, wanting to reclaim the fuckups and failures I’ve passed through on my own and to be a messenger of something good to the world.

Perhaps redemption means something different to you. This world has different stories and meanings, all with their purpose and place. I’d suggest that you look at the moments of your life when, faced with challenges that affronted what you believed to be true about yourself, you listened and learned instead of throwing a tantrum. Perhaps in those teachable moments, you became what you are today: a much more emboldened and humble person.

I look forward to the day when all the lessons are learned, but until that moment, I’m finding that to write my redemption story, I need to be willing to be humble, to listen, and to act in accordance with the grace I’ve been given.

May it ever be so.