Ripples Across My Pond
Me, Dad and my younger brother on Nanna’s doorstep
Allow your story to be a stone.
Go on, throw it, see what happens.
‘Are you sure I can’t get you a drink love?’ She asks again, popping her head into the slightly shabby and overwhelming beige bedroom.
‘No thanks, I’m fine’, I reply.
This is a complete lie, of course; I’m not fine at all.
My reply is a brush off, designed to end the conversation before it begins. Dad lifts his heavy eyelids, then stares right at me. He knows I’m here but is he trying to tell me something?
He quickly glazes over again, I get back to writing.
Writing this story, searching for something people might want to read. I am trying to organise key life events that shaped me and the way I think. Attempting to show how connecting with my story helped me do more of the things that really mattered. It’s not easy. It’s hard to find a cohesive structure, hard to define what feels instinctive and hard to explain that feeling in my gut.
Sitting here on the off-pink vinyl chair, thighs getting sticky, I begin to recognise the heart of what I want to say.
Learning to be aware of my own story — not the narrative chronology — but my feelings, my motivations. Becoming confident enough not to flee from challenges, reflecting and learning from my story; this has all helped me enormously.
I know this very moment will teach me something and shape me somehow, creating new ripples across my pond. I don’t know how — yet — that will come in its own time and can’t be forced.
But I’ve learnt to listen to myself, dwell in these difficult moments as they show me valuable things.
In this moment it’s just me and Dad, our last couple of days together. Yes, it is difficult and draining but it is also very very special.
Goldilocks and cruising pains
I didn’t always think this way. My previous guiding principles were safety and comfort. Very sensible things to want out of life, I thought. I did not take risks, I kept my emotions in balance and was a steady, safe pair of hands. Everything in life was played safe; not too hot, not too hard, not too soft — just right. However, I created problems for myself by thinking this way. I had very little purpose in life, very few passions … and so I drifted. I was anchored to very little, aside from staying safe and comfortable. Friendships drifted in and out of my life, jobs came and went.
In the wise words of James Victore — I was living with my cruising pains and they were making my life smaller — every day, every month, every year. I did not know this, yet. But I was ever so slightly disengaged from my own life.
I didn’t set out to change things, I wasn’t on a quest for enlightenment. I was comfortably living within my cruising pains. But two things happened to me that led me to a different way of thinking and thoroughly disturbed the surface of my pond.
My two stones
In the space of a couple of years, two huge stones were lobbed into my pond; utter failure at work and adopting two kids that didn't think like me.
Learning to reflect on these experiences, spending time understanding what they could teach me, this is what helped me change my view of myself and the world around me.
Over the years I had drifted into a career. It ticked all my comfort boxes — good salary and pension, blue chip corporate employer and a respectable job title. I performed well, was liked and respected. Yet I was also partly responsible for the complete failure of a once successful business. Over the space of a couple of years, the business I was a key part of collapsed and the experience left me hollowed out and empty. My instincts were to run, run to the next comfortable choice and do what I thought would keep me safe.
Before I had a chance to think I was on the upper floors of a glass office tower, all suited and booted, trying to act like a grown up. I was being interviewed for a job with a good salary and pension, solid corporate employer and an impressive job title.
I didn’t get it, I wasn’t ready and deep down I didn’t want it.
Nonetheless I took the rejection badly. The direct route straight back into comfortable corporate life had been denied to me; I was being forced to stay in this uncomfortable place, forced to stay face to face with my failings.
In hindsight this was wonderful. I was not ready to move on. I had not yet listened and learned why I had failed. The first stone had landed and I needed to let its ripples change me.
Stone number two soon arrived.
We became adoptive parents to a baby boy and girl.
I knew from the very outset that this was not the safest most comfortable choice to make, but those ripples were changing me and I knew that with the love and support of Amanda, my wife, that we’d be OK. Upon reflection, the stone that landed with such a deep plop into my pond was not becoming a father. The second stone in my story was the experience of living with the many challenges our kids face every day.
My kids don’t think like me, they don’t conform to parenting textbooks or educational progress charts. It is often hard and sometimes violent. I struggle and often wish it would all go away so I could retreat back to a quieter more comfortable life.
But that life was much much smaller than the one I share with my kids. Those two shining stars have given me the opportunity to learn new ways of communicating, learn how anxiety and trauma changes our thinking and to really understand the difference between what we say and what we mean.
Learning these skills has created a much calmer home life, and so much more.
Knowing that I am helping my kids flourish sparked a passion and purpose within me that I began to realise I wanted to build a new life around.
This is the point where I allowed the ripples from both stones to mingle. By taking the time to reflect on my professional failure I understood the parts of that story that held the most meaning for me — it was the way people had felt and the way we treated one another. As business conditions got difficult and our challenges grew the way we worked together changed, we became protective, cynical and disengaged; we were being shaped by fear.
Fear was both a cause and consequence of our collective failure.
By spending time reflecting on this traumatic time I was able to see the part I played, understand the impact and listen to that feeling in my gut. Inside me a feeling was growing and I needed to listen.
The poet Fateme Banishoeib calls this ‘the whisper’ and mine was getting louder.
I knew I needed to do all I could to prevent people feeling the way I had felt; to stop people being hollowed out by their workplace. I needed to do what I could to help leaders create workplaces full of trust and kindness. The insights gained by helping my kids to thrive showed me how this could be done. Founding a new business and shedding the safety net of corporate employment was not the safe and comfortable choice. But it was the choice I was eager to take.
