Nate Nasralla's Blog, page 3

trespassing for the view

The Big Idea: no plan is often the best plan.Have you ever lost control while driving on a snowy or slippery road? Where the backend of your car fishtails, and you can’t help but wonder, “How’s this going to end?”

Years ago, I remember thinking, “This ain’t good!” as my friend’s sedan skid through six inches of snow, downhill, sideways, towards a cement curb. I grabbed the passenger door and braced for impact. Curbs look like military-grade barricades when you’re unintentionally sliding toward them. As the inevitable happened, and we smacked the barricade so hard it snapped the car’s control arm, the front wheels of our front-wheel-drive vehicle were immobilized.

In full disclosure, we chose to drive through a blizzard just to slide through abandoned side roads. It was fun. When we were in control, that is. Paralyzed and helpless, it was no fun waiting in the cold for help to arrive. As the sun set, I debated how long we’d last before having to eat the feathers in our down jackets.

Whether it’s losing control of your car, your career, or any other life choice, losing control sucks. Let’s just be honest. We all love control. Which also means we love having a plan.

Plans provide us a sense of certainty, and predictability, you see. Even the most spontaneous of people create plans. Type B folks just create shorter-term plans with less warning. They still expect events and experiences to turn out as they envision.

The trouble with our love of control and planning, however, is that life rarely unfolds like we tell it. Have you noticed that? You might demand your manager notice your creative genius and promote you to your rightful position within the company. That doesn’t mean it’ll happen. It’s why for every book that’s been written about making it big and achieving your destiny, just as many pages have been written about taming anxiety and finding inner peace.

Simply put, life doesn’t always go according to plan.

I think that’s okay, though. Actually, I think it’s a good thing. I’ll go so far as to say that, often, not having a plan is the best plan.

Now, before your inner Type A cries objection, did you know that paintings rarely turn out like they do in the artist’s head, before getting started? Paintings, music, books. All art changes with each small brush, note, or keystroke. The artist learns from the paint and print already impressed on the canvas and page. From there, they know how to direct the next stroke a bit differently.

In the same way, we don’t always know what’s best for our lives. We learn what’s best by living.

But to truly live, we have to ditch the plan once in a while. All plans require predictable inputs and accurate assumptions. We’re not omniscient, so we can’t possibly account for all of the options and permutations as we create our plans.

More importantly, our lives are defined by our relationships, and relationships rarely develop as we expect (that’s not my opinion, study after scientific study concludes that relationships are the only thing that leads to a happy, meaningful life).

It’s why we say, “People are people.” People are different from everything else in the world. We all have emotions, spirits, hopes, fears, frustrations, and individual identities. These things are much more subjective than what we can quantify within a spreadsheet. It’s possible to calculate if your annual earnings increased or decreased. There’s no formula that says if your relationship with your in-laws improved over the holidays.

So, while we yearn for control in life, and we hate to feel like we’re sliding out of control, we have to embrace the reality that when it comes to creating meaningful relationships, no plan is often the best plan. Memories and human connections are too brittle. They can’t be forced to fit our molds – they’ll crumble under pressure.

Our favorite memories are the ones we never expected to make. We don’t plan them. We can’t plan them, in fact. I’ll show you what I mean: think about the memory that makes you smile brightest.

Okay, are you smiling now? Not yet? That’s the wrong memory, then. Pick a new one. Choose a moment that makes you laugh.

Are you giggling? Okay, good. That moment you just recalled – was it planned? Were you trying to create it?

I’ll bet not, because when I think about the time I’m smiling widest, it’s not my wedding day. Although it was an amazing day, I did a lot planning for that day. I (obviously) knew it was coming. Instead, I think about the night my wife and I waded into the icy waters of Lake Michigan, to climb a fence protecting a park that overlooks Chicago’s Ferris Wheel (the fence bordering the lakefront was, understandably, shorter than the rest of the fence).

As we left my apartment for a dinner date, I’m fairly certain I didn’t say, “Hey, I have this great night planned. First, we’re going to soak our pants in ice-cold water. Then, we’re going to watch people riding the Ferris Wheel, but we won’t actually ride it. Great, right?!” That night just, well, it just happened.

Married before 30 was never part of my plan. I always assumed that if I wanted to do and see things in life, I’d have to cram them into the decade before a wife, kids, and a mortgage. I was wholly mistaken, of course, but I didn’t understand that until I was ready to marry my bride (I did say living and learning is better than sticking to our plans, right?).

So, when first I started seeing this girl, Erin, who I eventually married, I was skeptical. I assumed that spending time together would throw a wrench in my plan. At the time, I wanted to focus on myself. I was building a company, racing Ironman’s, traveling, and generally doing the things I thought ambitious 20-something’s should do. I had a timeline, and I was going to stick to it.

Erin is very pretty, however, and she was interested in doing the things I liked doing. That was a very convincing combination. So after she signed up to race the Chicago Triathlon, I figured there couldn’t be any harm in seeing her for a few days each month. We started meeting at Lake Michigan’s Ohio Street Beach to swim at 6 a.m. every Wednesday morning. What guy could resist a beautiful girl joining his favorite sport?

No man, that’s who. Less than two months later, I threw the whole, “I’m just really focused on my career right now,” line right out the window. There was one specific night that convinced me. It was the night we watched the Ferris Wheel in the moonlight. While we were trespassing for the view, I ended up seeing that Erin’s worth far more than any of the selfish plans I’d created for myself.

I looked down at a text from Erin. “Great! Thanks! I’ll drive, we can park at my office downtown,” it read.

Chicago’s famed Ferris Wheel was getting an upgrade. It would be taken down and replaced after a final weekend of offering free rides to the city. Erin really wanted to go, but she hadn’t found anyone willing to go with her.

“Sounds good. I’m going to nap for 30 minutes, then I’ll meet you out front,” I tapped out my reply.

It was late, I was exhausted, and yet, I’d not only agreed to go with Erin to Navy Pier, I was excited about it. Something had changed. On most nights, I was in bed by 9:30 p.m. On this night, I was taking a nap to be ready for a 9:00 p.m. excursion.

In the two months before this night, Erin and I had met to swim in Lake Michigan every Wednesday morning. We’d cycled through the forest preserve. We’d raced a triathlon. But never had we seen each other, just to see each other. Strangely, that meant something to me.

I tried to nap, but instead, I thought about why this night felt so significant. We were just friends, right? Thirty minutes came and went as I restlessly waited for Erin’s text. My phone buzzed, right on time, and I scrambled down the stairs from my loft to the street. 

“Hey!” Erin said as I climbed into her Jeep.

“Ready?” I asked as she turned onto Lakeshore Drive.

“Very,” she nodded. “I haven’t been to the Ferris Wheel in ages.”

As it turns out, neither of us were ready for a four-hour-long wait time. When we arrived, we found an endless line of people snaking through Navy Pier, the Wheel’s iconic home.

“Woah, I was not expecting that,” Erin groaned.

“We can wait here if you want?” I offered, hoping she wouldn’t actually ask me to wait in line until one o’clock in the morning.

She shrugged. “I don’t think it’s worth it. Do you?”

“No, not really. I think we need to find a new plan.”

“Fine by me. Any ideas?”

“Yes, food,” I said. There’s no bad time for food, in my opinion. “Looks like there’s a good Mediterranean place close by. The portions look huge,” I pointed to the reviews on my phone.

Erin laughed, “Sure, we can get falafel! I haven’t had falafel in a while, either.”

Minutes later, as we sat in a restaurant booth, I scanned the menu for falafel. Clearly, there was a mistake. Falafel wasn’t listed anywhere.

“Welcome guys, can I get you something besides water?” Our waiter asked as he greeted us.

“Yes, falafel,” I said confidently.

He shook his head, “I’m sorry sir, we don’t serve falafel.”

“Oh, strange. Well, could you ask the chef to make falafel? She was really looking forward to it,” I explained.

“I’m sorry sir,” he shook his head. “I’ll give you both a minute to look at the options.”

“Strike two,” I said to Erin.

“So much for that,” she sighed.

As we picked the second-best options on the menu, we managed some small talk, and we studied each other. Each of us wanted to figure the other out.

Unbeknownst to me, Erin had been hoping that I’d take her out on a real date, in real clothes – not another swim date in wetsuits. She wondered if I knew, figuring there was no way she’d been able to conceal her butterflies.

Meanwhile, my thoughts centered on what to do after we ate. The flutter I felt as I climbed into Erin’s Jeep told me I didn’t want to be just friends. Friends eat and say goodnight. People who are more than friends linger. They find ways to avoid saying goodnight.

I hadn’t planned anything else, however. Our original plan was foiled. Then I supposed the extra-large Mediterranean portions would content me for the night. I wasn’t into dating, remember?

I was uncertain of whether Erin was open to a relationship, so I didn’t want to force anything. If I suggested something too overt, like chocolate fondue for desert, it’d seem inconsistent. People don’t go from swim caps to sexy foods in the same week. So, I figured we should just wander around for a while.

After our waiter returned to the table, I quickly handed him my credit card. “I’ll get this one. You can get it next time,” I told her, implying I wanted there to be a next time.

Bellies full, we started roaming the city. Without an agenda, we eventually found ourselves in the place that was most familiar to us. We stood on the sands of Ohio Street Beach, looking out over the waters we’d swam in just a few days earlier.

“The Lake is way creepier at night,” Erin remarked, pointing at the abyss that was the boundless, featureless Lake Michigan after dark.

“Sure does,” I agreed. “But the Ferris Wheel looks way cooler in the moonlight.” I pointed at the towering, signature wheel located a few blocks south from the beach.

“I bet the view is even better over there,” I said as I turned toward a waterfront park built between the beach and Navy Pier.

“Yeah, I bet. Too bad the park’s closed. We’d have to like, climb the fence or something,” Erin laughed.

“Good idea!” I exclaimed. “The fence is even shorter down the waterline.”

“Nate, I was kidding.”

“I’m not. We’ll only have to go thirty yards into the water. We can take our shoes off and roll our shirts up. It’ll be worth it.”

To be honest, I don’t remember how I convinced Erin that soaking our pants in exchange for a better view of the Ferris Wheel was a worthy trade. Maybe I said one of those movie lines, “When you look back on your life, how do you want to be remembered?”

Regardless, a few minutes later, barefoot and dripping lake water, we scaled the fence protecting the park. We ran into the center of the park and stood, side by side, gazing at the bright white lights rotating against the backdrop of the Ferris Wheel’s red spokes and the night’s black sky.

“Totally worth it,” I said to Erin.

“Definitely,” she said back.

It was a moment that was special enough on its own. We didn’t need to add many words. Besides, don’t we remember the feelings we feel, not the words we say?

My heart was beating so fiercely I thought it might break the silence. Which was unusual, because I’d climbed my fair share of fences. I’d been given a free ride home in the back of a squad car before. So, clearly, trespassing wasn’t to blame. Instead, it was who I was trespassing with.

It was cheesy, but as I looked from the Ferris Wheel to Erin’s glowing smile, I thought to myself, “I had the better view all along.”

I don’t think our grandparents shared our obsession with planning. They couldn’t, really. Their environment, technology, and mobility didn’t permit the same degree of control we’re afforded today. Instead, they relied on people.

My grandmother used to talk about her mother riding to neighboring farms to collect eggs, milk, butter, and flour to bake her a birthday cake. People pulled together back in the day. They needed each other.

I don’t think I could have done it. Relying on other people for something as simple as a birthday cake, I mean. That’s not me. I like the modern luxuries that give me control over things as complex as air travel. If my plans are scrambled, no problem. A-List status moves me to the front of the line, and I can switch my flight without paying any penalties.

So, during a week of literally having travel, food, errands, bills, and the rest of my life in the palm of my hand, I’m tempted to think I possess the same degree of control over my relationships. But, when that mindset is applied to romantic relationships, it’s not called convenience, or technology. It’s called selfishness.

Not long into dating, I quickly realized that Erin’s plans weren’t my plans. We were, and are, very different. So, if I wanted our relationship to succeed, I had to give up some of the control I’d grown accustomed to in my modern, single life.

That was frustrating because I wanted all the benefits of a relationship, with none of the reciprocity. Now, I’m not suggesting I was some type of angry toddler screaming I’d never share my apple juice. Selfishness is much subtler, and more surreptitious, when you’re an adult.

Sure, I liked exploring our city and tasting different restaurants – when it worked for my schedule. And yes, I liked meeting new friends and family – when I wasn’t tired from a long day at work. It was in these moments of feeling busy or tired that I noticed self-interest creeping into the quiet of my thoughts.

I’d go through the motions. I’d eat and I’d greet. But it was perfunctory, and empty of my heart, because I couldn’t do my thing on my time. On the other hand, by sacrificing my plans, I could have made a full-blooded and affectionate deposit into our relationship.

That is much easier said than done, however. We spend years and years acclimating to influence. As we mature, personally and professionally, we plant the seeds of control. We earn incomes, we develop interests. Those are good things, too. But like thick green ivy that’s pretty to look at when contained, our own interests, freedoms, and abilities can quickly become weeds that choke out everything else around it.

Don’t misunderstand me, please. We’re walking a very thin line here. Co-dependence and spineless relationships are what we produce when we don’t cultivate our own plans and personalities. But, left to grow wild, our default preference for control produces selfishness and mere compliance, not sacrifice and compassion.

We must deny ourselves without losing ourselves, you see.  

For example, in my experience, the perfect environment in which my selfishness germinates are social plans being sprung on me at the last minute. Generally speaking, I need an hour head’s up so that I’m mentally prepared to be “on.” I’m what you call an “ambivert.” I can be very charming and outgoing – when I summon the energy to be. It’s not my natural disposition.

So, if I’ve planned to write, hike, or otherwise spend a Saturday morning as I choose, and Erin asks me to do something that wasn’t in my plan, sacrifice is required. Either on my part, as I forgo my preference in favor of Erin’s priority, or on Erin’s part, as she recognizes that her plan has collided with mine.

This is the stuff that relationships are made of. Sacrifice is the glue that holds even the most unlikely of relationships together. A pure focus on the other’s interests is what makes relationships work, whether they be romantic, familiar, or collegial.

If we’re in it for our own happiness, we’ll never find it. But if we deny our happiness to focus on giving joy to the other, we’ll be filled up.

So in the end, this all comes down to the delicate balance of knowing when to stick to our plans, and when to ditch them. Other people rarely follow the plans we make, and nobody is naturally self-effacing. When these conflicting forces converge, we can’t try to control the other half of our relationships. We can’t bend the wills and desires of others to align with our own. Relationships are far too brittle. They crumble under pressure.

Instead, when it comes to making memories and building bonds, the plan that works best is often no plan at all. If we’re ready to put the other first, ahead of our selfish interests, we’ll find ourselves feeling far more fulfilled.

Is there someone significant in your life that’s talked about a new restaurant, or a new adventure? Would that thing throw a wrench in your plans? Maybe you don’t like eating Mediterranean. Maybe you don’t enjoy giving up your free evenings.

If so, I’ll bet that if you eat that meal, or try that thing, with the person you love – without expecting anything in return – you’ll find yourself with a new favorite memory.

As backward as it sounds, quit narrating the story and you’ll find the happy ending you’ve been planning for.

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trespassing for the view

- no plan is often the best plan -Have you ever lost control while driving on a snowy or slippery road? Where the backend of your car fishtails, and you can’t help but wonder, “How’s this going to end?”

Years ago, I remember thinking, “This ain’t good!” as my friend’s sedan skid through six inches of snow, downhill, sideways, towards a cement curb. I grabbed the passenger door and braced for impact. Curbs look like military-grade barricades when you’re unintentionally sliding toward them. As the inevitable happened, and we smacked the barricade so hard it snapped the car’s control arm, the front wheels of our front-wheel-drive vehicle were immobilized.

In full disclosure, we’d chosen to drive through a blizzard just to slide through abandoned side roads. It was fun. When we were in control, that is. Paralyzed and helpless, it was no fun waiting in the cold for help to arrive. As the sun set, I debated how long we’d last before having to eat the feathers in our down jackets.

Whether it’s losing control of your car, your career, or any other life choice, losing control sucks. Let’s just be honest. We all love control. Which also means we love having a plan.

Plans provide us a sense of certainty, and predictability, you see. Even the most spontaneous of people create plans. Type B folks just create shorter-term plans with less warning. They still expect events and experiences to turn out as they envision.

The trouble with our love of control and planning, however, is that life rarely unfolds like we tell it. Have you noticed that? Sure, you might demand your manager notice your creative genius and promote you to your rightful position within the company. That doesn’t mean it’ll happen. This is why for every book written about making it big and achieving your destiny, just as many pages are written about taming anxiety and finding inner peace.

Simply put, life doesn’t always go according to plan.

I think that’s okay, though. Actually, I think it’s a good thing. I’ll go so far as to say that, often, not having a plan is the best plan.

Now, before your inner Type A cries objection, did you know paintings rarely turn out like they do in the artist’s head, before getting started? Paintings, music, books. All art changes with each small brush, note, or keystroke. The artist learns from the paint and print impressed on the canvas and the page. From there, he or she knows how to direct their next stroke a bit differently.

In the same way, we don’t always know what’s best for our lives. We learn what’s best by living.

But to truly live, we have to ditch the plan once in a while. All plans require predictable inputs and accurate assumptions. We’re not omniscient, so we can’t possibly account for all of the options and permutations as we create our plans.

More importantly, our lives are defined by our relationships, and relationships rarely develop as we expect (that’s not my opinion, study after scientific study concludes that relationships are the only thing that leads to a happy, meaningful life).

It’s why we say, “People are people.” People are different from everything else in the world. We all have emotions, spirits, hopes, fears, frustrations, and individual identities. These things are much more subjective than what we can quantify within a spreadsheet. It’s possible to calculate if your annual earnings increased or decreased. There’s no formula that says if your relationship with your in-laws improved over the holidays.

So, while we yearn for control in life, and we hate to feel like we’re sliding out of control, we have to embrace the reality that when it comes to creating meaningful relationships, no plan is often the best plan. Memories and human connections are too brittle. They can’t be forced to fit our molds – they’ll crumble under pressure.

Our favorite memories are the ones we never expected to make. We don’t plan them. We can’t plan them, in fact. I’ll show you what I mean: think about the memory that makes you smile brightest.

Okay, are you smiling now? Not yet? That’s the wrong memory, then. Pick a new one. Choose a moment that makes you laugh.

Are you giggling? Okay, good. That moment you just recalled – was it planned? Were you trying to create it?

I’ll bet not, because when I think about the time I’m smiling widest, it’s not my wedding day. Although it was an amazing day, I did a lot planning for that day. I (obviously) knew it was coming. Instead, I think about the night my wife and I waded into the icy waters of Lake Michigan, to climb a fence protecting a park that overlooks Chicago’s Ferris Wheel (the fence bordering the lakefront was, understandably, shorter than the rest of the fence).

As we left my apartment for a dinner date, I’m fairly certain I didn’t say, “Hey, I have this great night planned. First, we’re going to soak our pants in ice-cold water. Then, we’re going to watch people riding the Ferris Wheel, but we won’t actually ride it. Great, right?!” That night just, well, it just happened.

Married before 30 was never part of my plan. I always assumed that if I wanted to do and see things in life, I’d have to cram them into the decade before a wife, kids, and a mortgage. I was wholly mistaken, of course, but I didn’t understand that until I was ready to marry my bride (I did say living and learning is better than sticking to our plans, right?).

So, when first I started seeing this girl, Erin, who I eventually married, I was skeptical. I assumed that spending time together would throw a wrench in my plan. At the time, I wanted to focus on myself. I was building a company, racing Ironman’s, traveling, and generally doing the things I thought ambitious 20-something’s should do. I had a timeline, and I was going to stick to it.

Erin is very pretty, however, and she was interested in doing the things I liked doing. That was a very convincing combination. So after she signed up to race the Chicago Triathlon, I figured there couldn’t be any harm in seeing her for a few days each month. We started meeting at Lake Michigan’s Ohio Street Beach to swim at 6 a.m. every Wednesday morning. What guy could resist a beautiful girl joining his favorite sport?

No man, that’s who. Less than two months later, I threw the whole, “I’m just really focused on my career right now,” line right out the window. There was one specific night that convinced me. It was the night we watched the Ferris Wheel in the moonlight. While we were trespassing for the view, I ended up seeing that Erin’s worth far more than any of the selfish plans I’d created for myself.

I looked down at a text from Erin. “Dinner sounds great. I’ll drive, so we can park at my office downtown,” it read.

“Nice. I’m going to nap for 30 minutes, then I’ll meet you out front,” I tapped out my reply.

It was late, I was exhausted, and yet, I’d not only agreed to go out to dinner, I was excited about it. Something had changed. On most nights, I was in bed by 9:30 p.m. On this night, I was taking a nap to be ready for a 9:00 p.m. dinner.

In the two months before this night, Erin and I had swam in the Lake every Wednesday. We’d cycled through the forest preserve. We’d raced a triathlon. But never had we seen each other just to see each other. Strangely, that meant something to me.

I tried to nap, but instead, I thought about why this night felt so significant. It was just dinner, right? Thirty minutes came and went as I restlessly waited for Erin’s text. My phone buzzed, right on time, and I scrambled down the stairs from my loft to the street. 

“Hey!” Erin said as I climbed into her Jeep.

“So, how hungry are you?” I asked as she turned onto Lakeshore Drive. “I found a great Mediterranean place that’s close to your parking garage. The portions look huge.”

Erin laughed at the rationale for my restaurant choice. “Mediterranean? What kind of food does that mean?”

“You know, kebabs, falafel, that kind of food.”

“I’m not that hungry, but it sounds great. I’ve never had falafel before,” she shrugged as we drove down the lakeshore.

“How’s that possible?” I couldn’t believe it.

“I guess I’ve never had anyone want to eat falafel with me. We should order some!” Erin exclaimed.

As we sat in a booth at the Mediterranean restaurant, I scanned the menu for falafel. Clearly, there was a mistake. Falafel wasn’t listed anywhere on the menu.

“Welcome guys, can I get you something besides water?” Our waiter asked as he greeted us.

“Yes, falafel,” I said confidently.

He shook his head, “I’m sorry sir, we don’t serve falafel.”

“Oh, that’s strange. Okay, well, could you see if the chef can make falafel? She’s never eaten falafel before,” I explained.

“Sure, I can check on that, yes,” he nodded and disappeared behind the kitchen door.

As the chef cooked us falafel on the fly, we managed some small talk, and we studied each other. Each of us wanted to figure the other out.

Unbeknownst to me, Erin had been hoping that I’d ask her out on a real date, in real clothes – not another swim date in wetsuits. She wondered if I knew, figuring was no way she’d been able to conceal her butterflies. One thing she did know for sure; spending more time together would mean trying lots of new things.

Meanwhile, my thoughts centered on what to do after dinner. The flutter I felt as I climbed into Erin’s Jeep told me I didn’t want to be just friends. Friends meet for dinner and say goodnight. People who are more than friends linger. They find ways to avoid saying goodnight.

I hadn’t planned anything, however. I’d thought the extra-large Mediterranean portions would content me for the night. I wasn’t into dating, remember?

I was uncertain of whether Erin wanted a relationship, so I didn’t want to force anything. If I suggested something too overt, like chocolate fondue, it’d seem inconsistent. People don’t go from swim caps to sexy foods in the same week. So, I figured we should just wander around the city for a while.

After our waiter returned to the table, I quickly handed him my credit card. “I’ll get this one. You can get it next time,” I told Erin, implying I wanted there to be a next time.

Bellies full, we roamed the city streets after dinner. Without an agenda, we eventually found ourselves in the place that was most familiar to us. We stood on the sands of Ohio Street Beach, looking out over the waters we’d swam in just a few days earlier.

“It looks way creepier at night,” Erin remarked, pointing at the abyss that was the boundless, featureless Lake Michigan after dark.

“Sure does,” I agreed. “But the Ferris Wheel looks way cooler in the moonlight.” I pointed at the towering, signature wheel that occupies the famous Navy Pier, located just south from where we stood.

“I bet the view is even better over there,” I said as I turned toward the waterfront park built between us and Navy Pier.

“Yeah, I bet. Too bad the park’s closed. We’d have to like, climb the fence or something,” Erin laughed.

“Great idea!” I exclaimed. “The fence is even shorter over there.”

“Nate, I was kidding.”

“I’m not. We only have to go twenty yards down the water. We can take our shoes off and roll our shirts up. It’ll be worth it.”

To be honest, I don’t remember how I convinced Erin that soaking our pants in exchange for a view of the Ferris Wheel was a worthy trade. Maybe I said one of those lines from the movies, “When you look back on your life, what do you want to be remembered for?”

Regardless, a few minutes later, barefoot and dripping lake water, we scaled the fence protecting the park. We ran into the center of the park and stood, side by side, gazing at the bright white lights rotating against the backdrop of the Ferris Wheel’s red spokes and the night’s black sky.

“Totally worth it,” I said to Erin.

“Definitely,” she said back.

It was a moment that was special enough on its own. We didn’t need to add many words. Besides, don’t we remember the feelings we feel, not the words we say?

My heart was beating so fiercely I thought it might break the silence. Which was unusual, because I’d climbed my fair share of fences. I’d been given a free ride home in the back of a squad car before. So, clearly, trespassing wasn’t making my heart race. It was who I was trespassing with.

It was cheesy, but as I looked from the Ferris Wheel to Erin’s glowing smile, I thought to myself, “I had the better view all along.”

I don’t think our grandparents shared our obsession with planning. They couldn’t, really. Their environment, technology, and mobility didn’t permit the same degree of control we’re afforded today. Instead, they relied on people.

My grandmother used to tell me stories about her mother riding to neighboring farms to collects eggs, milk, butter, and flour to bake her a birthday cake. People pulled together back in the day. They needed each other.

I don’t think I could have done it. Relying on other people for something as simple as a birthday cake, I mean. That’s not me. I like the modern luxuries that give me control over things as complex as air travel. If my plans are scrambled, no problem. A-List status moves me to the front of the line, and I can switch my flight without paying any penalties.

So, during a week of literally having travel, food, errands, bills, and the rest of my life in the palm of my hand, I’m tempted to think I possess the same degree of control over my relationships. But, when that mindset is applied to romantic relationships, it’s not called convenience, or technology. It’s called selfishness.

Not long into dating, I quickly realized that Erin’s plans weren’t my plans. We were, and are, very different. So, if I wanted our relationship to succeed, I had to give up some of the control I’d grown accustomed to in my modern, single life.

That was frustrating because I wanted all the benefits of a relationship, with none of the reciprocity. Now, I’m not suggesting I was some type of angry toddler screaming I’d never share my apple juice. Selfishness is much subtler, and more surreptitious, when you’re an adult.

Sure, I liked exploring our city and tasting different restaurants – when it worked for my schedule. Yes, I liked meeting new friends and family – when I wasn’t tired from a long day at work. It was in the moments of feeling busy and tired that I noticed self-interest creeping into the quiet of my thoughts. I’d go through the motions. I’d eat and I’d greet. But it was perfunctory, and empty of my heart, because I couldn’t do my thing on my time. On the other hand, by sacrificing my plans, I could have made a full-blooded and affectionate deposit into our relationship.

That is much easier said than done, however. We spend years and years acclimating to influence. As we mature, personally and professionally, we plant the seeds of control. We earn incomes, we develop interests. Those are good things, too. But like thick green ivy that’s pretty to look at when it’s contained, our own interests, freedoms, and abilities can quickly become weeds that choke out everything else around it.

Don’t misunderstand me, please. We’re walking a very thin line here. Co-dependence and spineless relationships are what we produce when we don’t cultivate our own plans and personalities. But, left to grow wild, our default preference for control produces selfishness and mere compliance, not sacrifice and compassion.

We can deny ourselves without losing ourselves, you see.  

For example, in my experience, the perfect environment in which my selfishness germinates are social plans being sprung on me at the last minute. Generally speaking, I need an hour head’s up so that I’m mentally prepared to be “on.” I’m what you call an “ambivert.” I can be very charming and outgoing – when I summon the energy to be. It’s not my natural disposition.

So, if I’ve planned to write, hike, or otherwise spend a Saturday morning as I choose, and Erin asks me to do something that wasn’t in my plan, sacrifice is required. Either on my part, as I forgo my preference in favor of Erin’s priority, or on Erin’s part, as she recognizes that her plan has collided with mine.

This is the stuff that relationships are made of. Sacrifice is the glue that holds even the most unlikely of relationships together. A pure focus on the other’s interests is what makes relationships work, whether they be romantic, familiar, or collegial. If we’re in it for our own happiness, we’ll never find it. But if we deny our happiness to focus on giving joy to the other, we’ll be filled up.

So in the end, this comes down to the delicate balance of knowing when to stick to our plans, and when to ditch them. Other people rarely follow the plans we make, and nobody is naturally self-effacing. When these opposing forces meet, we can’t try to control the other half of our relationships. We can’t bend somebody else’s will and desire to align with our ideals. Relationships are far too brittle. They crumble under pressure.

Instead, when it comes to making memories and building bonds, the plan that works best is often no plan at all. If we’re ready to put the other first, ahead of our selfish interests, we’ll find ourselves feeling far more fulfilled.

Is there someone significant in your life that’s talked about trying a new restaurant, or a new adventure? Does it throw a wrench in your plans? Maybe you don’t like eating Mediterranean food. Maybe you don’t enjoy giving up your free evenings.

If so, I’ll be that if you eat that meal or try that thing with the person you love (without expecting anything in return), you’ll find yourself with a new favorite memory.

As backward as it sounds, quit narrating the story and you’ll find the happy ending you’ve been planning for.

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we only see light on our darkest days

Sometimes, the best plan is no plan at all. Know what I mean?

I spend most of my weeks planning. Companies can’t grow without spreadsheets, revenue forecasts, and expense reports. If staff don’t have a plan for the day, they either waste time, or start working on any old project that may not be helpful at all.

So plans are good, in my professional life, but the pendulum swings to the other extreme in my personal life. I have to summon tremendous amounts of mental energy to recall dates and dinner plans. My wife and I plan holidays over spaghetti dinners. The carbs power me through the conversation. 

It’s not that I’m bad with dates. I just spend too much of my weeks planning. By the time I shut my laptop for the night, I’m running on reserves.

Besides, some of our best memories are the ones we never expected to make. For example – think about a favorite moment that makes you smile.

Okay. Are you smiling?

No? That’s the wrong day, then. Pick a new one. Choose a memory that elicits an involuntary giggle.

Are you laughing now? Okay, good. The memory you just recalled – was it planned? Were you trying to create that day/moment/night?

I’ll bet not because when I think about the times I’m smiling brightest, it’s not my wedding day. I did a lot planning before that day. Rather, it’s the night my wife and I waded into the icy waters of Lake Michigan to hop a fence protecting the park that overlooks Chicago’s Ferris Wheel (the fence bordering the lakefront was shorter). The Ferris Wheel looks way cooler in the moonlight than the sunlight.

We had just finished a meal of kebabs and pitas at a Greek restaurant, and as I picked up the check, I certainly didn’t ask, “Hey, do you want to go soak your pants in chilly water? Maybe watch people riding the Ferris Wheel, but not actually ride it?”

That memory was possible because we let it happen. We wandered the city without an agenda.

So, often, no plan is the best plan when it comes to making memories and building relationships.

We had no plan when I picked up Erin at a two-terminal airfield in the Southwest corner of Colorado. I knew we were planning to visit my family who lives there, and celebrate my cousin, who was moving to Seattle. Beyond that, we had no itinerary.

After eating dinner and watching the sunset, I asked my uncle for his favorite hike in the San Juan Mountains.

“Oh! You know what?” He turned to us with a smile. “It’s Colorfest this weekend. You’ll love Colorfest.”

“What’s Colorfest?” I inquired.

“Balloonists from all around the country fly their hot air balloons this weekend. They launch them near the river at sunrise. It’s pretty incredible. And often, the out-of-town pilots will need volunteer crew,” he shared.

“Which means,” he continued, “If you show up early enough, you just might get to launch and fly in one of the balloons.”

I slapped the couch in excitement. I was sold. “We’re doing that!”

I turned to see what Erin was thinking. Her expression said something to the effect of, “No chance I’m riding a wicker basket 2,000 feet in the air without more information and a year of safety training.”

“That’s a great idea! You’ll have fun,” my aunt added from the kitchen.

“What do you mean, ‘show up early?’ How do we know who the pilots are? Where do we get registered?” Erin quizzed my uncle.

“Oh, you know,” he said casually. “Just show up at the park before sunrise and join the pilot’s briefing. The flight director tells the pilots about weather for the morning. Just walk in with the group and ask around. Somebody will point you in the right direction.”

“Here,” he passed us the local newspaper. “The paper lists the time and place.”

“Done.” I didn’t need any more convincing. “What’cha think, Erin?” 

“Well, I guess we should give it a shot. We can always hike in the afternoon, right?”

“Yes, deal. Fly first, hike later.” 

“Morning y’all!” The loudspeaker croaked as Erin and I walked into an oversized carnival-style tent before sunrise. “We got biscuits, gravy, coffee, everythin’ you need before we get the briefing underway.”

“Biscuits?” I asked Erin.

“Definitely not. My stomach’s already nervous. I just want to figure out where the heck we have to check-in,” she said.

“I don’t think there’s a check-in station. I think we just have to ask people if they need help. You know, acting like we’re not completely new at this.”

“But we are. We stick out like sore thumbs,” Erin pointed out. “Look at that guy – he’s got wings clipped to his jacket and a buzzcut.” 

After listening to the briefing, we made our way to the front of tent. As we walked, we heard someone shout, “Crew? Volunteers? Anyone?”

“Yes!” My hand shot up. “Us!” I grabbed Erin’s hand and rushed toward the voice.

“Okay, right over there,” the voice directed us toward a group of four wearing matching jackets.

“We’ll take’em,” the crew chief, Katie, confirmed.

We followed Katie out to her pickup truck, whose bed was full of balloon parts. An industrial fan, the wicker basket, a nylon canopy, fuel tanks, the works. We piled into the truck and drove a few minutes south as Katie laid out the ground rules.

“I’m your crew chief today, so that means whatever I say goes. Alright? You do what I say, and don’t do anything I don’t say, even if you think it’s right. Balloons are licensed aircraft, so we follow a certain process to make sure we’re always flying safely.” 

It turns out that Katie served as a helicopter mechanic in the Air Force for a decade. She knew her stuff. Erin, queen of all things safety, listened intently. 

“Once we get the balloon rolled out, we’ll start checking tethers, cables, and get the basket hooked up. Then we’ll inflate, alright?”

We nodded before getting to work. Twenty minutes later, as our pilot, Rick, began pumping hot air from the propane tanks into the canopy, I stood back wide-eyed.

The balloon grew like a King Cobra rising up from its coil. After the purple, yellow, and green canopy rose to its peak, it towered 100 feet overhead. It was impressive, to say the least. I had no idea hot air balloons are taller than most office buildings.

As Rick made sure his flight instruments were in proper working order, Katie gave us a pen and paper. “Alright you two. Want to go for a ride? Just sign these waivers and Rick will take you up.”  

Flying in a hot air balloon felt very different from what I’d expected. It was quieter than an airplane. Steadier than a glider. More calming than thrilling. I guess you could say it was more levitation-than-jetpack.

As we climbed higher and higher, I understood why the festival had been dubbed “Colorfest.” Every color of the rainbow was represented in a perfect, 360-degree panorama. Yellow aspens and green, purple, and blue balloons were scattered across a canvas of an orangey-red sunrise. 

“This is spectacular,” I whispered to Erin, who beamed as she clenched the basket.

“I don’t think we’ll forget this,” she whispered back.

We were watching the kind of beauty that makes you wiggle; like your mind can’t keep so much splendor to itself so it spills over, making your legs and arms quiver. 

“I guess this is why you fly in the mornings, huh?” I said to Rick as he opened the burner to climb even higher. “So you can see all the colors with the sunrise? 

“Not exactly,” Rick replied.

“It’s so our balloons fly better. Filling the canopy only creates lift when the air inside the balloon is much hotter than the air outside of it. The contrasting temperatures get us to liftoff. First light is always the coldest part of the day, so it’s easier to fly then.”

I stared into the massive, radiant dome above my ahead, cherishing the idea of contrast.

Obviously, I spend my weeks on the ground. I spend my weeks in motion, too. Working, working out, going there, coming back. But for a few minutes, I wasn’t on the ground, and we weren’t going anywhere.

You can’t actually steer hot air balloons, you see. There’s only one direction. Up.

There are no rudders to navigate sideways. You’re left to the wind’s mercy. You can’t even go down. Going down just means you’re choosing not to fill the balloon with hot air to force it to climb. So as the balloon drains of hot air, the temperature inside the balloon nears the temperature outside the balloon and you begin to sink.

We floated for a few more minutes, taking in the scene and pretending there was no basket below our feet. The silence of flying thousands of feet above the soil was interrupted only by the occasional jet blast to refill the balloon.

“Time to put her down,” Rick broke the silence. “Help me look for fences and powerlines, will you? Shout them out, even if you think I see them.”

“Can do!” Erin spoke up. 

As we looked out for powerlines, I noticed a bright orange flag tracing our flight. It was Katie’s pickup, tailing our flight, ready to help us haul the balloon back to town and refill the fuel tanks.

“Alright Katie,” Rick radioed to the ground. “It looks like we’ll put down between that barn and house, about a mile south from where you are now.” 

That was a little funny to me. Someone would be eating pancakes at their kitchen table one moment, and then and see our 100-foot balloon dropping into their backyard the next.

That’s how it had to work, though. We were running low on fuel, so we had to land, and land wherever the wind said we would land. 

I think balloon rides mirror our human experience. Every day, we wake up to find there are two opposing forces that make up our lives. We rely on warmth — kindness, love, being good to each other — to keep us afloat in a cold, cold world.

When the cold of death, grief, and depression threaten to collapse and crowd us, we crave to fill our days with the warmth of laughter, celebration, and joy all the more. 

Any toddler can tell you we love seeing balloons fly and hate watching them deflate.  We appreciate good people and hate see bad things happen to them, too.

Just this past week, a friend lost his job. He’d worked for the same organization training nonprofit leaders for 15 years. Then, abruptly, he was told they were eliminating the position. To make matters worse, when I called him to catch up, he shared he’d just been diagnosed with cancer, too.

He’s such an upright guy that I started calling him the “Hall Monitor.” He’s the model example of how to conduct one’s self, and if he ever sees someone acting out of line, he has the courage to speak up. So why should the hall monitors of our world get cancer and lose their jobs?

I don’t think I’d prefer the reverse, by the way. Where all of the convicts and criminals contract carcinoma and go unemployed. That wouldn’t make the world any better. The happy people wouldn’t be any happier, and the sad people would just get sadder.

I guess a better question, then, is, why do we have to live in a world filled with darkness and evil? And I don’t only mean evil things happening to good people. I also mean the people who do evil things. Like shooting up a synagogue.

There’s something inside all of us that says senseless violence has no place in our world. Something cries out there is, in fact, an undisputable and immutable difference between good and evil.

The thing is, however, we can’t know what’s good if we don’t experience bad, and all share the same definition of what’s bad. If everything is good, or if good and bad are all the same, and merely left to the individual to define according to his/her preference, everything we experience would just be called “life.” 

The contrast is a helpful, uncontested part of our human reality. We truly know light because of our darkest days. We know warmth because we feel cold. We treasure flying high after we’ve been brought low.

What I’m saying is that deep-dish pizza and beer never taste better than after a 90-mile bike ride in blistering heat. Without the physical ache, mental anguish, and total exhaustion of an endurance ride, that little slice of heaven wouldn’t be anything special. It would just be regular old pizza (which would be a shame, because pizza is already among the most superior food groups out there).

Now, you may be wondering, “What gives? I just wanted a story about hot air balloons. Why all the philosophical pontification?”  

Well, I think it’s an important part of being human. The contrast of good and evil, warm and cold, light and dark, it all signals that there’s something far greater than the two opposites.  

Our abject, visceral reaction to witnessing evil is driven by some objective basis upon which we differentiate good and evil. It’s the third thing outside of good and evil that makes us say, “That is just not right!” You see, the object we use to measure an item, and the item being measuring, cannot be one in the same thing. 

I believe one of history’s greatest authors on this topic, CS Lewis, would agree:

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? 

We all feel the world is not as it’s supposed to be. We feel this way because something transcendent, above and outside us, told us there’s a difference between good and evil. We couldn’t have arrived at this ourselves.

Or, as Lewis said:

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning. (see here)

In the world of hot air balloons, we have thermometers and barometers to tell us, with absolute certainty, differences in temperature and atmospheric pressures. Similarly, in the world of morality, there is a natural and absolute moral code that’s been hardwired into us. Someone gave us that compass – that conscience, if you will – to pilot us.

But, as our hot air balloon ride reminded me, the instruments we use to discern if we’re on or off course can’t put us back on course. Instruments don’t stop up us from crashing into other balloons – or crashing back to earth when we run out of fuel. 

Just the same, having a conscience isn’t enough. Knowing the difference between shooting and saving someone doesn’t prevent mass murders.

As I shared, when you fly hot air balloons, you’re dependent on your crew chief and your chase vehicle. Otherwise, what do you do when you run out of fuel? When the propane tanks are empty and we can’t keep the warm flowing, we need someone outside our wicker basket, watching and waiting to scoop us up. 

Likewise, we need someone outside humanity to lift us up when we run out of fuel and the cold, dark world overcomes us.

To return to Lewis’ perspective once more:

“God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there.” (see here) 

To be certain, I’m not implying that evil is somehow noble or virtuous because its existence ultimately points us back to God. By no means. And if you may be tempted to feel I’m full of “hot air,” here, I too agree more proof is required before we can begin to arrive at the God of the Bible. Unquestionably, much more proof than a single hot air balloon ride could offer us.

But the takeaways we’ve come to are nonetheless helpful, I believe. And yes, they are much heavier than the conclusions my writing usually results in, but alas, the past week of news has been weightier than my normal.

So, in the end, I’ve come to learn that we’ll see light most clearly on our darkest days. We’ll find love most vibrant in the face of hate, and we’ll discover that compassion is most powerful when confronting malice.

Regardless of where you ultimately land on the issue of God, humanity, and the relationship between the two, let’s try our best to fill each other’s’ balloon with the warm things of life. When we have the opportunity, let’s chase down our friends who have run out of fuel and are plunging toward an unforgiving crash-landing.

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how I was right and wrong at the same time

I spend most of my weeks trying to be right. At work, at home, with friends, with family. It feels good to be in the right, doesn’t it?

Whether it’s a mechanical question like, “How do I know if my engine’s burning oil?” Or a relational question like, “What do I say to my grieving friend?” it’s nice to have the answers. Competency is among the most fulfilling feelings, in my opinion. To feel competent is to feel skilled, wise, accomplished, trusted, sought after, all in the same moment. Who doesn’t like that?

In fact, I like to appear in the right so much that sometimes, I make stuff up. It’s probably the one thing I do that embarrasses my wife, Erin, more than anything else. I’m a terrible actor on camera, but on life’s stage, I’m an Oscar-winner. I’ll give you an example of what I mean.

Erin and I were hiking through the Vail Valley on a sweltering summer day. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, so when we left the exposed prairie for the shaded shelter of the evergreens, we sat on the trunk of a fallen pine tree for a water break. Shortly thereafter, I grew restless and opened my pocket knife. As I began to pick and peel away the bark with my blade, a middle-aged woman with an enduring scowl and the presence of your fifth-grade lunch lady emerged from a bend in the trail. Immediately, she fixed her gaze on my woodcarving.

Clearly agitated, she approached me, folded her arms, and chided, “Hey! You shouldn’t be doing that, you’re harming the tree. Stop!”

I looked up from the trunk, partly bewildered, and completely uninterested in being told I was in the wrong. Carving a dead and decomposing tree wasn’t hurting anyone, right? I held my tongue, hoping she would move along.

A moment later, she quipped with biting sarcasm, “What are you, some type of botanist?” 

Seeing no National Forest Service patches on my critic’s outfit — much less any justification for chastising me — I decided to turn the tables on her.

“Why yes, I am,” I replied without skipping a beat. “I’m studying the cohabitation of plants and insects at Texas A&M. The high sierra beetles have really decimated this region, so I’m trying to establish a cause of death for this spruce. Are you aware of the beetles in this area, mam?”

“Oh, well, no. I’m not,” she quickly apologized.

“That’s surprising. They’ve grown pretty aggressive in recent years,” I continued my charade. “We’re just hoping that with enough research and early action we can stop the spread.”

I glanced at Erin as she buried her face in her hands, mortified. 

“Have a nice day,” the lunch lady groaned as she moved up the trail. 

Once she was out of earshot, Erin lifted her head to comment, “Nate! I can’t take you anywhere!” She wasn’t thrilled, but I was quite pleased. I smiled wider than a kindergartner holding a fishing pole hooked to a six-inch bass.

Somebody tried to back me into a corner, and I emerged the victor. I was in the right — even if I’d made some (or all) of it up.

The irony of my botanist impersonation is that my want (and borderline need) to be right often finds its root in Imposter Syndrome. It’s the shadow cast by my driven, ambitious personality.

Imposter Syndrome is a pervasive fear that someday, I’ll be found out. The world will discover that any accomplishment I may have once claimed was happenchance, the mere byproduct of sweet serendipity. I suppose one can have a healthy dose of Impostor Syndrome, like a glass of red wine. I overdose, however. Getting drunk on accomplishment numbs feelings of inadequacy.

Now, I won’t detail what I perceive those accomplishments to be, because that’s not the point here. The point is that if I’m on top, I can’t be called out. I can’t be condemned if I’m on the king’s throne. So, figuring out how to be in the right proves to be my coping mechanism. 

The trouble is that always trying to be right is like bringing a treadmill to a marathon — it gets you nowhere. It’s a hopeless endeavor without an end. Life’s a long race, and more often than not, we all make mistakes.

So, the mantra I’ve tried to adopt (not always successfully) is, “Do right, don’t be right.”

“Do right” lets me screw it up, so long as I make it up.

I share all of this as context for a story of the time I was both right, and wrong, in the same moment. I was equally correct and mistaken, contemporaneously.

While it may sound like this was a somewhat rare occurrence, it happens fairly often. It’s a weekly phenomenon, in fact. Your weeks may be just the same. On this particular occasion, a grumpy hiker wasn’t my issue.

Instead, I was embroiled in a dispute with a negligent painter I’d contracted.

To set the stage, being a first-time homeowner is exciting. Replacing junction boxes and hanging cabinets are, perhaps surprisingly, all things I enjoy. I like figuring out the answers to life’s issues; I feel capable when I do. Buying a home was like a playground full of problems to solve.

If you’ve never bought a house, have you bought furniture from Ikea? Did you enjoy setting it up? Did you try to build it without looking at the instructions? Buying a home (at least buying a dated, country-antique-styled home) is like buying eight pieces of Ikea furniture that are all missing their instructions. You just figure things out as you go.

After we closed on our house, we gave ourselves one month to complete some of the major renovations that would be easier without furniture standing in the way – flooring and painting, in particular. We ripped up carpet and tack strips late into the night. I hauled cases of flooring from our local Home Depot. But when it came to painting, it was going to be too big of a job for me to complete within our move-in timeline, unless I had help. The yellow-and-green color scheme had to go, so I invited four different painters to give us an estimate. 

One of the painters, Jim, stuck out to us. He was willing to go the extra mile by including spackling and repairing holes without billing us for the extra time. Jim explained he was a new business owner, and his crew was very experienced, so if he didn’t keep them busy with new projects, he wouldn’t retain them. I could empathize. We talked about the plight of growing small businesses, and our shared sense of struggle sealed the deal for me.

“The guys are going to be excited to hear this,” Jim smiled. “When do you want us to start?”

Jim and his crew finished painting on a Thursday evening, so Erin was planning to see the new blue-grey color scheme after work on Friday. However, a snow storm hit Denver and shut her in our apartment that Friday night, while I was in San Diego for the weekend.

On Sunday morning, after the snow had cleared up, and as I waited to board my flight to Denver, Erin called. “Nate! Nate!” her voice cracked as I slipped on my headphones. 

“E, what’s up?” I wasn’t sure if she was panicked, or if there was static in our connection.

“Icicles are hanging from our faucets, and all the toilets have ice blocks in them!” I froze, standing in the middle of the airport walkway. “What? How’s that possible?” I asked.

My mind raced, considering the possibilities. Our house had dropped in temperature while I took a few days to setup our utility services, so I was positive I’d set the thermostat to a balmy 70 degrees before I left for San Diego.

“All our windows are wide open! The heat’s turned off!” Erin declared.

It had to be the painters, I thought to myself. But why would they do that?

“There’s paint smeared in the bathtub, and it’s speckled on the kitchen island — I’ll send you pictures. Nate, this had to be the painters,” Erin confirmed my suspicion.

“What should I do?!” She asked as she started to close the windows.

Erin was panicked because frozen pipes mean burst pipes, burst pipes mean flooding, and flooding means moldy drywall and warped hardwood. I looked at my watch as I guided Erin to shut off the water main in the basement. My flight was boarding soon.

“Just hang tight now, E. This is Jim’s mess. He needs to help fix it.” I called Jim after I hung up with Erin, but I didn’t get an answer. Answer your phone, I texted before calling again.

Jim picked up on my second call. “Jim, hey, it’s Nate. Listen, your guys left our house a mess. The windows were wide open and the heat was off. Our pipes are frozen solid.”

“How’s that possible?” Jim said, genuinely shocked. “My guys don’t leave a job site like that.”

“Well, they did. Had they not left paint smeared around the house, I might have believed you.”

“I just, I can’t believe that.”

“Jim, my wife’s at the house, crying, scared of flooding. I need you to get over there.”

“Okay, yes, I’m on my way now.”

Boarding had already started, so I walked up to the gate and flashed my “A” position boarding pass. After the agent scanned my phone, I called our real estate agent, Eric.

“Eric, I’m glad you answered, I really need your help,” I said as I quickly explained the situation.

“Oh man, I’m so sorry Nate,” Eric said. “I’ll call T.J., he’s the best plumber I know.”

Jim had left the house by the time I arrived to meet Erin. I didn’t bother to drop my backpack, I just walked from room to room, watching ice melt from our P-traps and faucets.

Erin and I sat on our stairs, wondering what would come of our new house as we waited for T.J. the plumber. I really didn’t want to replace moldy drywall.

“Hello? Hey, I’m T.J. I hear you guys have some frozen pipes?” T.J. said as he walked in.

“Yes, hello T.J. Thanks for coming,” I stepped down from the staircase to shake his hand.

“Well, I’ll make sure you’re not in any immediate flood danger tonight, checking everything out visually. I’ll come back tomorrow afternoon when I have all of my gear to run a full inspection.” 

T.J. walked through the house for twenty minutes before giving me his professional opinion.

“So, based on what I’m seeing – which I see all the time, unfortunately – I’m guessing the toilets and faucets are cracked, exposed piping will need to be spliced and replaced, and we’ll see about damage to piping inside the walls.”

“Best case,” T.J. continued, “I’m guessing two, maybe three thousand in costs.”

“Okay, well, if there’s nothing more we can do now, just keep us posted tomorrow,” I asked.

“Will do, y’all have a good rest of your night,” T.J. offered as he stepped out of the house.

I chucked my backpack into Erin’s trunk and I sank into her brown leather seats. “I’m not going to wait for the final bill to file a claim,” I said, processing my thoughts aloud. “This is negligence, this is on Jim’s insurance,” I said firmly, digging out my phone to call him.

As we drove out of our new neighborhood, Jim answered immediately. He was anxious to hear the latest. I relayed T.J.’s opinion to him, and asked for his contractor’s insurance. “I need you to email me your policy tonight,” I directed him. “I want to get repairs started this week.”

“Yes, of course, I’ll work with you on this,” Jim assured me.

“Great, thanks Jim. I realize this isn’t the position you want to be in, either.”

Erin and I left work early the next afternoon. We wanted to be there as T.J. finished his inspection. Jim hadn’t yet sent me his insurance information, so I called him as we drove, “Jim, I really need your full policy. I have proof of coverage, but the full policy will tell me if we need to get an adjuster out to the property — can you email it to me, now, please?”

Typically, a contractor interacts with an insurance company directly. My gut told me something wasn’t right, however. I didn’t trust Jim to follow through.

“Listen, Nate, you know I want to work with you on this, right?” Jim started off in a smooth voice. “But after thinking about it, I just don’t see this as my fault. Really, you guys should have gone to the property to make sure everything was okay.”

He was starting to slip the ropes of responsibility. “Hold on Jim. You can’t have this both ways. You can’t tell me you’ll work with me, but then say this it’s actually my fault.”

“Well, what I’m saying is that I’ll guide you through this process, but I can’t file a claim. The blame doesn’t ultimately lie with me. My guys just don’t operate this way, and even if they did, you have to be responsible for your own property now. This is your home.”

A tidal wave of vitriol swelled within my chest. I knew exactly what Jim was up to.

Jim was avoiding increased insurance premiums and more out-of-pocket costs. The path to saving the skin on his own ass was convincing me, a first-time home-owner, that I’d missed part of my job description. You see, after sufficiently convincing me that I’d shirked my responsibility for my property, Jim could play the rescuer. He’d swoop in to negotiate costs with the plumber, and guide me through the rehab process.

I saw right through it. I was fuming, but I kept my response composed. 

“Jim, stop. Let me make this very clear. Responsibility falls squarely on you. If you try to wiggle out of this, I promise it will come back to bite you. Neither of us want to go to court, but if we do, there is no scenario in which I allow you to walk. Is that clear?”

I’m sure Jim felt the knife-edge in my voice. Erin, who prefers to avoid direct conflict at all costs, felt it. She stared at me, wide-eyed.

“Woah, Nate, I told you I’m going to work with you. That’s not going to be necessary.”

“I hope not Jim, because the responsibility lies with you.”

“Well, I don’t believe a court will see it that way,” Jim retorted, continuing to switch his approach from helpful-hero to Mr. Slick.

I laughed before shooting back, “Here’s the headline, Jim. ‘Negligent contractor takes advantage of unsuspecting homebuyer.’ How do you think that’s going to go? When I show pictures of smeared paint and build a pattern of recklessness, plus a flight itinerary that says I wasn’t in town to inspect the home, what’s the verdict going to be?”

“I think they’ll see things my way,” Jim dug his heels in.

“Let’s just see what the damage is, and we’ll take it from there,” I hung up the phone.

Two days later, after T.J. sent me his invoice, Jim started screening my calls. I texted him what I thought to be good news. There was zero damage to our waterlines, P-traps, and faucets.

The bill for the inspection totaled a mere $525.00. T.J. said that in 20 years of plumbing, he’d never seen pipes freeze and leave zero damage. Our pipes and plumbing infrastructure were completely intact. As strong as ever, in fact. It was a literal miracle.

I expected Jim to respond to my message, elated that he’d been let off the hook. Instead, he didn’t reply. For weeks, Jim dodged my emails, calls, and texts. He ignored my repeated requests to pay T.J.’s invoice, which started to accumulate late fees.

After a month of no response from Jim, I decided to switch my approach. I was in Nevada for work, so I picked up my hotel phone and dialed his number. “Hello, this is Jim.”

I smiled, deviously. “Hello Jim, this is Nate. We need to talk about this plumbing invoice.”

Jim groaned, “Nate, that was your plumber. You called him, and in my opinion, that’s way too much money for an inspection. I’m not going to pay it.”

“I’d hoped we could avoid this Jim, but I don’t feel like we’re going to create any resolution between the two of us. Can we at least agree on that?” I offered.

“Yes, I agree, we’re very far apart on this,” Jim granted me.

“Okay then, I’ll be filing papers for a small claims suit tonight. You can expect to hear about a court date in the near future,” I informed him.

Feeling confident that I was in the right, I leaned into Jim. Hard. I wasn’t going to let him paint me as the inept homeowner. “By the way, when I file those papers, understand the total isn’t going to be $525. You’ll be paying damages for mental anguish, lost income, and it’s not going to end well for you. I promise you that.”

I was in control of the situation, and I knew it, so I began to manipulate Jim to do exactly as I wanted. Not because I needed the money, but because I had him by the balls.

I wanted Jim to admit that he was wrong, I was right, and there was nothing he could to do change it. This was no longer about rectifying contractor negligence. My words were feeding my need to be on top.

“Okay, okay, I don’t think we need to go there. How about I work off the total? I can come work on lighting, or other projects?” Jim offered.

“No, Jim. To be candid, I have no interest in letting you back into my home. I don’t trust you, so pay this invoice, or I’ll see you in court.” I said it just like the movies, “I’ll see you in court!” 

“Nate, I can’t keep talking about this, I have work to do,” Jim said as he hung up.

I cracked open my laptop. Expecting this, I’d already drawn up papers to file my claim with the county court. I pressed “send” on an email I’d drafted to really put the screws to Jim.

Here’s the thing. I’d had the Ace of Spades up my sleeve the whole time. With a little research, I’d discovered that Jim’s ex-wife was listed on the LLC’s state registration. So, I named her in the suit, demanding she show up to the hearing. Picture that for a moment. Can you imagine Jim defending himself, with his ex-wife forced to stand with him?

Did I think I was brilliant? You bet. And let’s be honest, I was conniving. But was there evil in my heart? Unfortunately.

I’d wholly suppressed the little voice telling me to do what was right – to forgive Jim, to treat him respectfully, and to show him grace – in favor of being right. I wanted to photocopy and frame the court’s decision declaring me victorious, and hang it over every toilet in our house.

I’d flushed “Do right, don’t be right,” right down my fully-intact drain. 

As I stepped into the security line at McCarran International Airport a few hours later, my phone rang. It was Jim. “Hello,” I answered.

“Nate, I really don’t think this needs to go to court. I’ll get you payment, but I need time. Jobs are really tight right now, so I don’t have the cash to pay today.”

“Jim, we’re talking about a few hundred bucks. This isn’t in the thousands,” I reminded him.

“I know, I know. But if we can just work out a payment schedule, I’ll pay it in full.”

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll send you an MOU, which states you’re in the wrong, and you’ll make payment within two weeks. If you sign it, I’ll hold off on filing the suit.” I knew that if Jim signed an admission of guilt, it wouldn’t matter if he did or didn’t pay. I’d have a silver bullet that would allow me to proceed directly to filing a lien against him.

“Okay, send me the MOU. I’ll sign it.”

“By 5pm tonight. If I don’t see the MOU in my inbox, I’m going to court,” I hung up the phone and stepped back into the security line.”

Here’s the thing. I was all too content with my overly-litigious spirit. Actually, I was beyond content. I was thrilled. I’d outmaneuvered Jim and left him no cards to play, so he, of course, did sign the admission of guilt. As I walked through Denver International looking at the signed document on my phone, it felt like a personal scoreboard. That, in turn, made Jim my opponent.

Jim was no longer someone to love, he was someone to beat. An obstacle standing in the way of me standing in the right. However, I’d been in the wrong all along. While I believed playing my trump card meant I’d won, really, I just revealed my hand.

I’d shown my true colors. Had I told you I was a compassionate person, but the only interaction you’d observed was that of me and Jim, you wouldn’t have believed me. My behavior would say it all. Sanctimonious, smug, and coarse. Far from graceful.

One of my favorite authors, Bob Goff , says that, “Burning down others’ opinions doesn’t make us right. It makes us arsonists.”

Bob’s right. Jim proved I fit the profile of arsonist. If I’d been holding a big enough match, I would have burnt his business to the ground. I genuinely enjoyed the fact that I’d found leverage and emerged victorious. In the same way, arsonists enjoy watching flames lick over the homes, vehicles, and forests they set ablaze. It’s why they do it – there’s pleasure in it.

Timeout. This all sounds really ugly, doesn’t it?  

Well, Erin thought so. Once she learned of how I’d twisted Jim into submission, she questioned whether I was approaching things in a manner I’d regret. Confronted by her calling me out, I put lipstick on the pig. I layered on pretext like, “If he’d do this to us, who’s next?” and, “I’m just protecting the other homeowners he’s going to screw over.”

Ironically, this was around the time I was editing a chapter in my book Living Forward, Looking Backward, which tells the story of how I screwed up in a major way, and was shown grace I didn’t deserve. I wrote about how the man who showed me compassion modeled Jesus Christ’s example for how to love well, and give grace lavishly.

Erin pointed out I’d forgotten what I learned (let alone what Jesus commanded). It’s one of the many reasons we go together; Erin smothers the matches that only stand to do me and others harm. She was right, too. While I may have been legally correct — Jim was responsible for the damages — I wanted to be right, not do right, and that made me wrong.

I’m sometimes tempted to feel that the Bible’s stories about Jesus are irrelevant to modern living. I mean, if Jesus had been party to a modern contractor’s dispute, He’d surely tell Jim to pay up, right? And yes, Jesus talked a lot about loving people, saying thing like, “Do to others as you would have them do to you,” but does that really apply to forgiving debts?

Well, it turns out that Jesus did talk about this exact scenario. He told the story of a man who owed a bunch of money (about $7.04 billion in today’s dollars), and had his entire debt canceled. But, immediately thereafter, that same man turned around and demanded payment from another man who owed him a few bucks (obviously, things don’t end well for that guy).

Jesus’ story hits a little too close to “home” (if you catch my drift). There I was, no better than the man who owed billions, demanding that my lunch money be repaid, while also presuming that I’ll be shown grace for all of my missteps and mistakes.

So yes, the dispute did end with me paying the plumbing invoice and not filing suit. I wish I could say I’d planned that from the start, but that would be a lie. It was Erin’s gentle reminder that showed me how I’d ultimately been wrong all along. That I was right, but I wasn’t doing right, and I’d forgotten the lessons that Jesus taught. Thank heavens for Erin.

It may be that you’ve never bought a home. Or, you have bought one, but you’ve never found yourself entangled in a contractor dispute. Nonetheless, might there be a “Jim” in your life?

Is there someone you could call, text, or email to say that you were wrong, even if you were “right?” Maybe your Jim is a spouse or a close friend — did you try to gain the upper-hand in a wrong way?

If so, take it from me. No relationship, not even hired help, is worth burning for the sake of being right. It’s far better to do right.

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we never catch the things we chase

I slipped out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom. I sipped cold water and stood barefoot on the tile, feeling the chill diffuse through me, top to bottom.

My master plan wasn’t working out so well. I’d be driving 400 miles through rural Colorado the following day, and I wanted to make sure I awoke well-rested. I figured that if I simply tried harder, if I really focused on dozing off, I’d fall sleep within 7 hours of my 5 a.m. alarm. That wasn’t the case, however.

I drained my cup of water and pressed the little button on the side of my Timex watch. It glowed with a dull green hue, informing me 11:30 p.m had already come and gone. I’d been lying in bed for 90 minutes, thinking about sleep, but not actually sleeping.

Feeling frustrated, I forced myself to yawn. Perhaps I could trick myself. People who yawn are tired, and people who are tired go to sleep, right? If A = B and B = C, then A = C? 

Well, neither cold nor yawning made me long to crawl back under my sheets. I dragged my too-awake-self back to bed anyway, stretching the comforter over my face to stifle a groan.

Understanding that by this point, only a mere 5.5 hours of sleep were possible, my craving for sleep intensified. But of course, trying to regain lost time only cost me time. The harder I tried to clear my mind and doze off, the more alert (and annoyed) I grew.

Have you ever experienced one of these nights? The more you try to sleep, the more awake you feel? Those nights are maddening, am I right?

Well, I can’t tell you how many hours I slept that night. Eventually, I resolved to stop looking at my watch. I’d already lost the fight for fast slumber, so I surrendered the urge to calculate how many REM cycles I’d complete.

As backward as it sounds, that’s when I finally fell asleep. I caught what I’d been chasing when I gave up the chase. By stopping the race, I reached the finish line.

My pursuit was the very obstacle I needed to overcome. Go figure.

The next morning, I had a lot of think-time. Four-hundred miles worth, to be precise. As I drove the two-lane highways curling along the Rockies like an eternal cement snake, an old friend from college came to mind, John. 

John met this girl (I’ll call her Carly) on a spring break trip to Puerto Rico one year. While a whole group of my friends also went, John and Carly really hit it off. She quickly became John’s “it” girl, if you know what I mean.

John was smitten with Carly. He’d spend days debating if he should tell her so. “I just don’t want her to shoot me down, and never hang out with me again,” he’d say.

“That’s reasonable. But do you want to stay friends forever?” I’d ask in reply.

“No. Definitely not,” John would concede.

“Then you know what you gotta do,” I’d coax him.

One day, he decided to tell Carly how he felt. After John spilled, she strung him along with statements like, “I really enjoy seeing you, John,” and, “Our friendship means a lot to me, John.” Then, Carly shared her plans to reconnect with her ex-boyfriend. Dagger.

John, for all the obvious reasons, was beside himself. He was desperate to win back Carly’s affections in the pursuing months, so when Carly re-broke up (to nobody’s surprise) with her ex, he was there. He took her to eat at her favorite restaurant. They went mini-golfing. He stood by her.

But you see, the more John chased love, the more he sabotaged himself. Carly not only learned to lean on John for emotional support when dealing with her baggage from other relationships, whenever John tried dating other women during periods spent away from Carly, it never worked. He always compared everyone to the abstract, idealized “Carly.”

I thought about a specific conversation I’d had with John as I drove. One day, I had answered my phone to hear him mumble in a slow, solemn voice, “Hey… dude.”

“John, what’s up man? Where are you?” I inquired. 

“Just driving. With a milkshake,” he added after a pause. 

“Oh. What kind of milkshake?” I clarified. It sounded like this particular dairy beverage was strapped into his passenger seat, instead of sucked through a straw.

“Vanilla. Gas stations only have two flavors,” John acquiesced.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Dang man, why are you drinking gas-station milkshakes?”

“Well, I was going to meet Carly to see a movie,” John started to explain before I cut in, “That’s a bad idea man. Besides, isn’t she in grad school now? Like, two hours away?”

“Yeah, she is, so I drove a ways to meet her,” he continued. “But when I got there, and it was almost time for the show, I didn’t see her. When I called her, she didn’t answer except for a text to say ‘I can’t make it.’ I didn’t even get a sorry.”

That was cold-blooded. “She’s the worst,” I offered John. “You just have to forget her man…” I started to press before deciding it wasn’t the right time.

“I’m really sorry man. The milkshake was a good move,” I added.

Since that vanilla milkshake, John gave up the hunt. He stopped chasing Carly. And you know what? Once he did, he was happier. It took him a few years, but eventually, he even stumbled upon a girl that he really loves. I think they’ll get married some day soon.

Before the days of Serta mattresses and gas-station milkshakes, a guy named Jesus Christ walked the earth and talked about this same concept — we never catch the things we chase. Except Jesus discussed it in the context of grace.

He said we never catch grace if we chase grace. He didn’t just preach it, either. He lived it. He gave away grace so people stopped foraging for it.

We have stories preserved in ancient writings about Jesus living and eating with people who were emotionally abusive, exploitative, murderous, chronically sick, and even the milkshake-drinking rejects to promise them all forgiveness, healing, restoration, joy, and a full life.

Standing in stark contrast to Jesus’ way of life were these people called “Pharisees.” Pharisees weren’t mythical creatures (although their name makes it sound that’s the case). They were real, historical, religious leaders who chased righteousness. They worked hard to follow the rules. They tried to live perfect lives.

However, the Pharisees’ chase prevented them from finding the very thing they sought - good standing in God’s eyes. 

While Jesus said people were free to have a relationship with God — they didn’t have to earn it by following rules — the Pharisees scrutinized other people’s lifestyles to appear “holier than thou.” Jesus described this when He said, “For [Pharisees] preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them.”

Basically, as the Pharisees chased righteousness, they ran right past the relationship with God that Jesus was offering to them.

Honestly, I think I would have been one of those guys. I think the Pharisees just liked the thrill of the chase, and I do too. Grace feels too easy otherwise.

I like conquering challenges and surprising other people with my accomplishments. So the idea that, “For it’s by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing… so that no one may boast,” (reference here) doesn’t really interest me.

I like the rush of the hunt too much.  

While it’s true, I do enjoy the thrill of the chase, in my more honest moments, I think I have a hard time accepting all of this for a much scarier reason.

Frankly, I’m scared I won’t be fulfilled by the things I’m chasing. I’m unnerved by the possibility that I’ll climb to the top of the mountain, and discover that the fog and mist prevents me from looking down on the rest of the world.

This could be why I’ve chased more and more challenging experiences before turning 30. With the advent of each new life goal I create for myself, the mirage of accomplishment continues. I get to enjoy the high of pursuing something new, and delusion is strangely satisfying.

I often feel like I’m playing one giant game of Whac-a-Mole. Do you remember the game Whac-a-Mole? Where you’d use a mallet to smack mechanical moles that randomly pop out of holes?

My life is like that, expect instead of randomly chasing (whacking) goals and accomplishments (moles) that show up in my life for a short season, I grip the mallet in one hand, and reach underneath the game board to force more moles to pop up faster with my other hand.

It’s my own avoidance therapy . As more things for me to chase pop up, I’m never sad that my last pursuit didn’t bring the satisfying, lasting sense of joy I’d hoped for.

My wife, Erin, can attest to this. After I released my latest book, I seriously considered taking classes to get my pilot’s license so I can fly airplanes over the Rockies.

Apparently, I’m not alone in this, because the smart business models count on this anxiety.

After every Ironman I’ve ever completed, there were people to register me for the next year’s race waiting at the finish. Ironman knows how depressing it is to conquer one of the longest races in endurance sports only to feel, “It’s over? What now!?”

Of course, there are many issues with believing you’ve conquered Ironman after once race, just like assuming climbing Mt. Everest is the same as Rock Climbing 101 at your local gym (see here for more on that topic). But, can you relate?

How did you feel a few days after your last promotion? Do you enjoy driving your car as much as you did when you drove it off the lot?

And how about this week? What’s the new or next thing you’re chasing?

Will it fulfill you if you catch it?

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the most powerful sentences contain the fewest words

“So, do you think you’d enjoy having a dog more, or the same, since Belle came to stay with us?” Erin asked as we jogged along a creekside trail near our home. 

Erin was referring to the beautiful, four-year-old chocolate lab fastened to a crimson red leash. Erin wound the leash around her hand as Belle darted toward a cottontail rabbit.

Dave, Belle’s owner, had landed a prestigious summer internship while pursuing his MBA. His summer job required that he travel every week, so when I shared that Dave was searching for a summer home for Belle, Erin was thrilled.

“We’ll turn our house into Camp Nasralla!” She'd exclaimed.

Erin has these gorgeous brown eyes that are hard to say “no” to. They brim with tears at the sight of a dog in-need, which only makes it more difficult. Seriously. One photo of a senior-aged dog in a shelter elicits a more emotive response than me falling from a 12-foot ladder. That’s not to say that Erin doesn’t love me. She just really loves dogs.

So, without much debate, we did open Camp Nasralla for the summer. Belle had lived with us for two months at this point, which was long enough for Erin to begin referring to herself as “mom." She didn’t want Belle to grow confused, however, so she told Belle that we were a “Modern Family.” Belle had two dads, and one mom.

These are the things I should have considered before responding to Erin’s question. Except I didn’t. Instead, I just said what I felt.

“Less, actually. I’m less likely to want a dog.”

“Whoa, less?” Erin abruptly slowed her pace, as if I'd taken the wind from her sails. “How is that possible?” she pressed.

Belle looked backward as if to say that she, too, had in fact heard what I said, and she didn’t appreciate my attitude.

My statement was wholly genuine, mind you. I travel like a pilot most weeks, and those first two months of Camp Nasralla validated my assumption that arranging our calendar around a furry friend’s needs would require sacrifices. That wasn't something I was interested in, candidly.

However, as I focused on the selfish and logistical implications of dog ownership, I completely missed the feelings enfolded in Erin’s question. There’s more to communicating than the words we choose to speak, you see. I had overlooked how Erin chose to frame her question, “are you more excited, or the same?” She didn’t even think to provide a less option.

“You asked how I feel about owning a dog. I now feel I’m less likely to want a dog.” I repeated with as much empathy as a sack of jalapeño peppers.

I wasn’t just lacking empathy, though. I was being selfish. I was only thinking of the burden on my schedule. I wasn’t considering how much I love to see Erin happy, and how happy Belle makes Erin. Every morning that Erin wakes up to Belle excitedly wiggling her booty is like nine-year-old Erin being told it’s a snow day, and school is canceled. Let the good times roll!

“You’re kidding.” Erin coughed in disbelief.

“No, not kidding.” I said flatly.

We had reached an impasse. I decided to run ahead of Belle, imploring her to follow me and by extension, drag Erin along with her. My plan worked, and we resumed our jog.

It was a quiet morning on the trail. There weren’t many other cyclists or joggers to distract us, so I was forced to listen to the drumming of our shoes and the swishing of our shorts. Neither of us spoke to the other.

Erin soon broke the silence, “I just figured that you would have noticed how much I love Belle. You know I love her, right?”

“Yes, of course,” I replied.

Erin continued, “She’s just the best dog ever. I mean, Belle is incredibly well-behaved. So how are we ever going to get a dog if even Belle can't convince you?”

“That’s a fair question,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, it is.” She stated.

We ran in silence for a few more steps before I offered, “To be clear, I’m not saying 'never,' I’m saying 'not now.'”

It didn't seem to help.

Feelings are like honey. They’re sticky. They don’t wash away so easy. It takes more than a brief moment (of conversation) to clean up honey (feelings). And if you’ve ever left a bottle of honey sitting on the shelf for too long, you’ll realize that when it crystalizes, it becomes even more difficult to cope.

That afternoon, I allowed Erin’s feelings to crystalize. I mistakenly assumed that end-of-conversation meant end-of-issue. After we left our run to go to work, she went through her day feeling hopeless that I’d ever see the issue from her perspective.

I didn’t see a need to follow up on the conversation, however. I felt justified in my response. I had truthfully spoken my mind. Surely, she wouldn’t have wanted me to answer falsely, gaslighting a scenario of doggy delight, right?

Wrong. My option was not binary. Instead of choosing between a positive or negative response, I could have chosen to address the feeling within the question. But, I didn't.

Erin dropped her keys on the kitchen table as I looked up from my laptop to ask, “Hey, how are you?”

“I thought about our conversation all day,” she revealed, looking away from me as she spoke.

She pulled a coffee mug from her purse and set it in the sink. “I don’t think we’ve finished discussing the topic.”

“What’s there to discuss? You asked what I thought, and I answered,” I said coldly.

“Yes, and that’s true, but we never talked about how I felt,” she returned.

“Oh, okay. Well, how did you feel?” I inquired.

“Like I wasn’t heard,” she said.

I countered, “But didn’t you ask me the question? I thought you wanted me to answer, not listen?” 

“Well, based on your answer," Erin said, "I wanted to talk about it. But you went silent as we ran, like you didn’t want to. Then we had to go to work, so we didn’t get to follow up.”

“Okay?” I answered.

Erin paused for a moment before explaining, “I was expecting you to text me. Or call. You know, something to say that you understand how I was feeling. I thought you'd want to pursue me, but you didn’t.”

“Pursue me.” The key word there was “me.” Erin didn’t say, “pursue getting a dog.” Erin was talking about her need to feel understood by her husband, not her need for me to love dogs.

I missed that too, however. “Oh, I guess I didn’t know I was supposed to.”

“Nate, it’s not about right or wrong, what you were or were not supposed to do. It’s about the fact you didn’t want to know how I feel.”

“But I thought this all started by you wondering how I feel?” I reacted.

“You’re not getting it!” She cried.

“What’s there to get?" I exclaimed. "You asked me how I felt about a dog, and I said how I felt!”

That’s when the tears started.

Erin turned away from me, recoiling like we do when something cuts or burns us. She stepped toward the sink and drizzled soap into her coffee mug. The running water muted her sniffles, but I didn’t need sound to know she was sniffling.

On the first day of my college course, “Introduction to Relationships: Interpersonal Dynamics & Interactions,” our professor said 95% of the time, tears should be followed by an apology and a hug. During the remaining 5%, the severe cases, a brief discourse that alerts the other person of an incoming hug should precede physical contact.

Just kidding. I never took a college course called “Introduction to Relationships.” Classes like that don't exist. It would be antithetical, in fact. In the very moment that we define a series of rules or operations for building relationships, we undermine our own end. A rulebook would kill exactly that which it hopes to grow – authentic, genuine, healthy relationships.

And yet, I wanted a rulebook. I wanted to know Erin’s preferred process for how to proceed.

“Tell me what I should do, then,” I petitioned.

“Nate!" Erin cried out. "I don’t want to have to tell you!”

I continued to dig myself an early grave. “Then how do I know what to do?” 

“You should hug me! Say that you're sorry!”

“But because I want to, not because you told me to, right?” It was as if I just shot myself in my foot, reloaded, and then shot myself again before noticing the pain I was causing.

“Just hug me!” Erin pleaded, exasperated.

I moved toward Erin and wrapped my arms around her. As we stood in our kitchen chest to chest, my first trace of relational wisdom appeared.

I whispered, “I love you, E, and I’m sorry. I should have said that sooner.”

Erin nodded, affirming she'd heard me, and she appreciated my words. She had never wanted to change my opinion. She'd only wanted to know that I could empathize. 

As she remained motionless within my embrace, I stared at our dishwasher. I felt grimy, sullied for making my wife cry. I envied our dirty dishes for a moment. If only I could crawl inside our dishwasher alongside them, I'd load in the soap and turn the dial to "Power Scrub." We’d all emerge one hour later, spotless and without blemish.

People don’t get to sit inside dishwashers, though. When we walk into honey and are feeling sticky and grubby, there’s no “Power Scrub” to wipe things clean. Instead, we only have our words, and it happens that our most powerful sentences contain the fewest words. “I love you,” and, “I’m sorry,” just five words total, happen to be the mightiest of them all.

Meaningful relationships aren't built by quid-pro-quo. "We can get a dog so long as you..." That doesn't work over the long-term. Flat out capitulation doesn't work, either. It's only a matter of time before contempt and resentment sets in. 

Instead, I think a more viable alternative is to allow our desires to be reshaped. More often than I'd like to admit, I don't want something simply because I don't want to want it. Do you know what I mean? I develop a certain uncompromising narrative in my head, and when something contradicts that narrative, I shut it down.

The narrative I'd developed said that dogs kill freedom. You may laugh, or cringe, but I'm serious. My thought process went something like, "As soon as you give in and adopt a dog, say goodbye to travel, spontaneity, long weekends and late nights - all of the freedoms you love."

Strangely, the day that Erin had to part with Belle - the close of Camp Nasralla - was the day that I became open to Belle returning. The story I'd been telling myself started to fade like twilight in the late summer hours, and I grew open to my desires maturing.

I turned on my phone as our wheels skipped along the tarmac at Denver International Airport. My screen lit up with the preview of a new text from Dave, Belle's owner.

"Hey, I’m going to have to let someone take care of Belle when I graduate and start my new job," it started off. "My sister offered to take her, so I don’t want you to feel any pressure if it’s not the right choice, but if Belle would be the right dog for you and Erin, we could make camp her new home."

I smiled. One month had passed since Belle checked out of Camp Nasralla.

Each week since, as I checked into a new hotel - Portland, Los Angeles, Oakland, Dallas, the list goes on - I'd call Erin to ask how her day was. With each call I made, a recurring thought shoved its way into my mind, "Nobody is going to welcome Erin home tonight."

I hated that thought. I hated that it wasn't irrational; it was reality. As it persisted, it reversed my longstanding aversion to building our schedule around a dog's. It stoked my desire to know that Erin would be welcomed home by a smiling face each evening (dogs do smile, I’ve learned).

I texted Dave back, "I’d say let me confirm that with Erin, but I think she’d get on a plane to pick up Belle tonight if you asked her to!"

I pasted Dave's message into my conversation with Erin, followed by a "?" She texted me back immediately. Like incoming missiles, a series of seven texts communicating how much she loved Belle blew up my phone.

The last one asked, "But what do you think?"

I didn't need more than a few words.

"I'd love for Belle to join our family."

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the most meaningful tacos i've ever eaten

This is the fifth and final part of a weekly blog series, where I've posted a new excerpt from my book, Living Forward, Looking Backward, available September 10th on Amazon.com.

If you missed the first posts, go back and check out Part 1 , Part 2, Part 3, or Part 4.

Tacos & Tree Talk- paradox is the norm, not the exception -

As I watched him, I knew those things didn’t matter. The storm stirring inside me, juxtaposed against Michael’s calm, said so.

After arriving stateside from our post-race travels, Daniel and I received word from Team USA’s Long Course Triathlon director. We had qualified to race with our age-group team during the 2015 World Championships in Motala, Sweden. We didn’t need to consider the opportunity; we signed on immediately.

Before diving back into training, we took three months out of the pool and let our bikes sit idle. It was a nice break, but somehow, my work absorbed all the hours I would have spent training. Our company was growing and for all seven days every week, if I didn’t have something planned, I’d gravitate to my laptop and return to emails and projects.

I needed a mid-week reprieve from my intense work and training schedule. Fortunately, one day after church, a guy named Michael asked if I’d be interested in meeting to talk about the Bible and building businesses. It seemed like an interesting combination of topics so I said I was in. Michael connected me with a group of entrepreneurs from different places around the city and we all started meeting for breakfast on Wednesdays.

It was early. The city streets were still empty. I locked up my bike in front of the Union League Club, tucked my helmet into my backpack, and unfolded my jeans. I zipped up my orange pullover and walked past the Club’s front revolving doors. I stepped into the alleyway where the service entrance was located and cracked the door. I studied the front entrance and spotted the doorman. As he turned and diverted his gaze, I swept into the Great Room and bee-lined to the elevator. I held the ‘Close’ button down before anyone could stop me.

The Union League Club wasn’t really my scene. The dress code was too strict. If the doorman stopped me wearing jeans and a hoody, he’d send me right to the “lost and found.” It was really just a pile of clothes from the 1980’s that Club members had left in the locker room (intentionally, I imagine). Then, I’d be forced to pull on a pair of old slacks. That happened to me once. I was caught wearing jeans and the pair of pants I was given to wear were ten years out of style and five sizes too large.

Once out of the elevator, I made my way down a short hallway filled with expensive paintings. I settled into a lavish, leather-backed chair surrounded by mahogany shelving and a massive stone fireplace. It was the kind of room that reminded me of political shows, or oil barons. It was where powerful senators, state leaders, and “old money” all sit to joke about the normal, inconsequential people of our world in a plume of cigar smoke.

As Nate – another Nate – poured me a cup of coffee, I shook Tim’s hand. I said hey to Michael, Matt, Hank, and we waited for Mike to show up. We met in the same room every week. Each of us needed those mornings. Being entrepreneurs, we all rode emotional roller coasters while developing our respective projects or products that were always more demanding than rewarding. Michael and I were both focused on nonprofits and technology while the others were in finance, real estate, media, and restaurants.

We had our own ritual. While we’d wait for Mike to walk in 20 minutes late, Michael would serve as our group’s shaman and kick off the conversation with a certain discussion topic. As we talked, the other Nate would ask some type of existential, thought-stirring question like, “How can there be evil in the world if God is good?” We’d all think on that for a few moments. You couldn’t tame Nate’s curiosity. I appreciated his questions but Tim, Hank, and I didn’t always know how to respond. Matt would then break the silence with some sarcastic comment. Michael would reel the conversation in and we’d listen intently again. Then, Mike would walk into the room and crack a joke. We’d laugh, welcome him, and move on to the next topic.

This morning was different, however. Michael started off by sharing he’d be moving back home to his parents’ house in the suburbs. He was out of cash and waiting for more funding to fuel his startup.

He said he planned to use his in-between time to work at McDonald’s and share God’s love with his new co-workers. He was looking forward to an easier pace of life with more time to meditate. That sounded pretty radical to us, but if anybody would choose that path and thrive, it was Michael.

Before leaving the Club that morning, I promised myself I’d visit Michael in the suburbs. I enjoyed talking with him. More so, I enjoyed listening as he responded to my questions with profound, God-given wisdom. I didn’t want that to change just because he wasn’t living in the city anymore.

Michael had been living in the suburbs for a few months when March rolled around. I decided to check in and see if he was interested in meeting up for tacos, which he was. We met at the tail-end of a particularly demanding stretch of life for me. I had been working for nearly three months without a full day off as Brian and I drove the company forward by brute force, hacking together everything from new marketing initiatives to product developments. We even started renting Airbnb’s in remote forest locations just to work outside the city on weekends.

I was keeping up my training schedule for the big race in Sweden, too. While I loved my breakneck pace, I also knew I needed to find some rest. Dinner with Michael seemed to be just what I needed. We ordered tacos and without much delay, I asked Michael what he was learning about rest and restoration through his time in the suburbs. I knew he wanted to find more peace outside the city, and without the hustle of managing his company’s product launches and coding sprints.

Michael started talking about trees. He’d sit on his parents’ patio in the mornings to listen to the sound of the wind rustling the leaves and to watch the bright red cardinals flying across the yard. It was soothing to him. Then he started to talk about something much more profound.

“I’m also learning about resurrection, or at least I’m supposed to be learning about resurrection,” Michael said, dragging a handful of tortilla chips through salsa.

“Like, dead things coming to life? That kind of resurrection?”

“Right, and how the Bible’s story of resurrection plays out in our lives.” Michael paused to swallow his chips before continuing, “It’s a pretty relevant topic because our company has essentially died. We’re out of cash. We hibernated our website, and now we’re waiting for a new round of investment – a resurrection – to begin operating again.”

As Michael continued to talk about resurrection, he used the word “paradox” to describe how the foundational truths governing our lives show up in ways that feel very backward to us. He said our Creator, in His infinite knowledge, wrote a story with a script we never could have guessed.

“Give me an example of that, truth showing up backward,” I challenged more curiously than defensively. I set my pork taco down to focus on what Michael was saying.

“Well, it’s all throughout Jesus’ teachings and what we have recorded in scripture. Think about how Jesus said the poor will inherit the world, or how the first will be last and the last will be first,” Michael explained.

“More practically, think about how death gives way to life in trees.”

I laughed, “Trees? In what way?”

“Trees are actually dying as they lose their leaves. The tree has to conserve its energy for winter, so it kills its leaves by breaking down the chlorophyll in them. Then it sheds them to the ground. In the process of dying, the leaves change colors and we get something new and even more magnificent – a tree full of yellow, red, orange, even a whole season called ‘fall.’ Then, life ‘springs’ forth as the tree survives winter. There’s something beautifully backward about that. Death as the passage to life.”

Our tacos went down easy, but it would take me a while to fully digest Michael’s words.

Only the Author knows what will unfold in any given chapter of a story. In the same way, because I’m limited to my role as “Nate” in the Big Story of our world, my life’s most confusing moments only end up making sense over the long-term. After I’ve continued to live life forward, I can look backward and understand more in hindsight. I can re-read the script. Greater context affords clarity, and it helps me uncover the meaning underpinning frustrating experiences.

We’re characters, not authors, so we won’t always understand the “why” behind our experiences as we live them. But, if we realize that paradox is actually the norm and not the exception in the Big Story of our world, we’ll learn to study our confusing and ordinary moments more closely. We’ll begin to ask, “Why?” instead of, “Why me?”

Before eating tacos with Michael, I had never used the word paradox in a sentence, let alone considered how it may influence my life. Yet, the principle still applied. Here’s a quick example of what I mean.

Years before our dinner, I was turned down for an elite consulting job. I had prepared hours upon hours for the interview process and I had made it past 500 candidates to the final three. I even ranked highest on the business problems we were given to solve during the last of a four-part hiring process.

Then, somehow, they gave the job to the guy who bombed his last interviews. I remember hanging up the phone feeling shocked and confused. More accurately, I was pissed. But, years later, I came to appreciate that plot twist. That job would have taken me out of Chicago and I never would have found my call as an entrepreneur. What’s more, I’d never have met my wife.

Because I was infuriated in the moment, I didn’t look to the bigger storyline unfolding; I saw no purpose behind the rejection. Had I known that life often unfolds a little differently than we first expect, I’d have understood that rejection was actually a gift. That denial was a blessing. Now, that doesn’t make much sense on the surface, but over time, I found a more significant life with my wife and as an entrepreneur.

I put my taco back in my mouth and considered my options. If I agreed with Michael, what he was telling me would require a shift in my thinking. I didn’t find that very desirable. I wanted to keep my own storyline as the center of the world, with my own pursuits and ambitions as the focal point. I wanted to narrate and decide how my story developed, cherry-picking the elements of religion and Christianity that I found convenient.

But Michael told me that Jesus’ death and resurrection – the Gospel story – is actually the main story of our world. He said its truths are reflected in our daily lives. He said that if I looked for it, I’d see the Gospel story showing up in my life in ways I didn’t expect (as paradox).

Candidly, I thought Michael was nuts. He sounded pretty far out there. But, I considered the possibilities as he continued talking. I did believe that Jesus was a real, living person who walked this Earth. I also believed the historical evidence points to his death and subsequent resurrection. But did that translate to bigger things for my life? No. Not really. I wanted to live life as I wanted to now and worry about everything else when I died.

Ravi Zacharias is a Christian apologist who says there are four major questions in everyone’s life – origin, meaning, morality, and destiny. Everyone’s worldview – Atheist, Buddhist, Muslim, Agnostic, Jew – posits an answer to these four questions. Where did we come from? Why are we here? Am I a good person? Where am I going?

According to Ravi’s framework, I had been justifying my life by applying my worldview to two of these four questions – origin and destiny. I figured that if my faith told me how I got here (creation vs. evolution) and where I was going after (eternal life vs. annihilation), what does faith really have to do with how I live here on Earth? In other words, I had no choice but to accept the start and end dates of my life but I wanted to define the “dash” in-between.

It was my mental shortcut. It let me live in bliss. I could derive my own “meaning” and “morality,” as Mr. Zacharias would say, without some divine author directing me. I wanted to direct why I was living and to what end while defining if I was doing a good job of that. Truth doesn’t bend to our preferences, however. It permeates all corners of our lives whether we like it or not.

I loaded another tortilla chip with guacamole and kept thinking. As I did, Michael’s continued tree-talk broke through my neat dividing lines. He continued to talk about the greatest paradox of all time; full and eternal life was offered to everyone when Jesus died on a cross. Death was the passageway to a meaningful, moral life here on Earth.

I needed to change the topic. I didn’t enjoy feeling that my lifestyle was on trial. Looking back, I realize that Michael wasn’t calling me out in the slightest, I simply felt convicted. So, I lobbed him a few easy questions about working at McDonald’s, living at home, and some lighter topics.

As I faded between my thoughts and Michael’s words, I noticed something different about him. You know how there are those scenes in movies where someone is talking, and you see their mouth moving, but you don’t hear the words? Only the thoughts in the protagonist’s head?

This was like that. “Why does he look so calm?” I asked myself. There was a peace about him I hadn’t seen before. He looked rested, he spoke vibrantly, and he had a certain tranquility about him. Maybe he only looked extra peaceful in contrast to my own worn-down spirit that day. I couldn’t help feeling, however, that between the two of us, Michael was the one who was truly living.

All of our society’s values and ideals screamed, “that can’t be!” How was it that in a time when Michael was broke, working at McDonald’s, and living with his parents, he seemed less anxious than I was? I was the one leading a growing company with plenty of access to cash and investors; I drove a car and he walked; I picked up our dinner tab; I was going to sleep in a nice downtown loft while he was headed to sleep in his childhood bedroom.

By all measures, I was the one who should have felt inner peace. At the same time, as I watched him, I knew those things didn’t matter. The storm stirring inside me, juxtaposed against Michael’s calm, said so.

At the end of the evening, I asked Michael if I could give him a lift home. He said he preferred to walk. It was a nice night and walking would give him some time alone. So we said goodbye and I started up my car.

As I drove onto the highway’s entrance ramp to head back into Chicago, my eye caught something that seemed out of place. As I was winding around the ramp’s curve, there was a wolf limping across the ramp. He looked back at me with piercing, blue eyes.

His coat was magnificent – a rich grey and white waving in the wind like a wheat field on the Kansas plains. There was something striking about him. He gave me the kind of feeling that makes you hold your breath before letting it out in the form of “woah.” He walked with a limp, raising his front right paw that glimmered with a bright red streak across his white fur.

I took my foot off the accelerator to make sure I was actually seeing what I thought I was seeing. As I slowed, he vanished down the bank of the ramp and I lost him.                  

“Uh, what?” I said out loud. Maybe I hadn’t seen anything?

No, I definitely saw a wolf. He was as real as the tacos I had just polished off.

Clearly, a wolf of that caliber was out of place on a city expressway. Not only was he out of place, he was hurt. A thought came to me: the wolf was a symbol, representing a man who had been lost in the world and he was trying to find his way back home. In his search, he began pursuing things that didn’t matter, pushing him further away from home until he was injured in the process.

It was a strange moment, but to be honest, writing about it is much stranger. Putting this into written word reinforces its reality. This kind of stuff doesn’t usually happen to me.

I asked myself again, “Was that an actual sign, or is this just in my head?”

Seconds later, I passed a massive green sign that stretched over the highway and read “Wolf Road.” Wouldn’t you know it? It wasn’t just undercooked flank steak in my tacos. I was being asked to put more time and thought into the importance of my conversation with Michael instead of dismissing it. I suppressed my rising instinct to chalk everything up to coincidence and I thought about why I worked so hard, and what I was giving up in the process. I played out the trajectory of my life. I thought about who I’d become if I continued in the same way for a few more years.

I considered how I’d just worked 90 days straight. I realized that in the process of gaining a career, a company, and to be honest, an identity I really liked as an “entrepreneur,” I was also giving up time with my family and friends.

Selfishly, I had been focusing on my own ambitions and I had forgotten about the relationships and characters who had played an influential role in my life. Close to a month had passed since I had called my mom just to say hello. I had no idea what was happening in my brother’s or sisters’ lives. I hadn’t stopped by the family house to catch up with my dad.

Those were things I could have done while keeping a busy schedule, but I was too caught up living another story. I wasn’t malicious; I was just consumed. I hadn’t looked me around until Michael clued me into the big picture. You see, neglect is what happens when characters mistake themselves for authors – they wrap themselves up too heavily in the sub-plot. We start to believe we’re the whole story, or that the world hinges on the story we’re living.

Well, maybe not you. I do that too often.

I decided to text my dad, “Hey Pops, want to get dinner next week?” Fast forward one week, we did get dinner. And do you know what? It’s one of the most memorable meals I’ve ever shared with someone. I can still recall what we talked about, at which table we sat, and what we ordered. For a short while, I felt a sense of calm return. I wasn’t trying to do more or go faster. I found meaning in simply sitting and sharing life with my dad. I knew he enjoyed being with me, too.

It’s nice to know you mean something to the people you love just because of who you are, not what you’ve accomplished.

If you believe there’s a Big Story that brings meaning to your life, but you’ve been a little too wrapped up in your own story lately, who could you ask out for tacos? If you don’t believe there’s a Big Story to our world, where do you look for meaning? What matters most in your life?

Want to read more? Why stop now? If you've enjoyed the blog series, check out the full book, Living Forward, Looking Backward on Amazon.com.

SEE ON AMAZON

the weird things about us make us lovable & relatable

This week, we're taking a break from the blog series of Living Forward, Looking Backward book excerpts - check back next week for the final post.

I found one of my best friends, Dave, because he was short, and I was short, too.

When I say short, I mean short. I was 4’ 9” on the first day of my freshman year of high school. The average height of my fellow freshman was a full 12 inches taller than me. So, I couldn’t help but lock eyes with the only other guy who shared my line-of-sight. We shared a similar “perspective,” if you will, and we became fast friends.

Today, I still look for the short-kid-in-the-crowd. I try to associate with people who look like me, whether I’m choosing a seat on an airplane, or walking into a backyard barbecue full of people I don’t know.

We all do it. We feel comfortable around the people who like what we like, and who share our political, demographic, and social points-of-view. Sociologists call this “finding our tribe.” It’s a throwback to the days when people lived in small villages of family and friends. People who looked like us were safe. Anyone who didn’t was a potential threat. That mindset was ingrained in us, and still today, it influences how we relate to and interact with each other.

I believe, however, we make stronger and more authentic connections when we share what makes us different – our quirks and idiosyncrasies.

Shared interests and similar hobbies are fine conversation starters, but if we want to create real, genuine friendships, we need to get weird.  

It’s the paradox of relationships. Revealing the weird things about us actually makes us more lovable and relatable.

So, if we ever find ourselves craving human connection, and our close friends are those who know the intimately odd things about us, why shouldn’t we readily share our quirks with the people we first meet?

If you don’t believe me, the next time you need to create a name tag for yourself, try this out. At a networking event or social hour, for example, I’d pick up one of those “Hello My Name Is,” sticky tags and write out “Nate: I like Peanut-Butter Toast. Think about that for a second - what would you write on your name tag? 

Or, you could just read the list of my own quirks below. Can you relate to any of these?  If you can, do you feel like we’re better friends, now?

I bring a backpack everywhere. When I run, when I walk, even if there's nothing in it. Who knows? I might need it.
 I eat peanut butter and honey on two slices of toast, every single morning, without fail.
 I also have a thing for plain greek yogurt. No sugar, nothing. I eat a pound of it each week. Sometimes I put in ice cream cones, other times I spoon it right from the container.
 I take icy cold showers just so that my clothes feel even better when I pull them on after.
 I hate washing mugs. The tall kind of mugs that you put coffee or tea into are the worst. You have to get the full width of your hand into a tiny opening to clean the bottom.
 Speaking of, I hate the word “bottom.” Gross.
 I wear earplugs at concerts. If I don’t, my ears ring for a full 24 hours.
 I must squeeze out every last drop of toothpaste from the tube. I’ll retrieve it from the trash if someone throws it out too soon.
 I shut down around 9:00 p.m. It’s like someone hits the “off” switch and I’m incapable of coherent thought and meaningful conversation.
 I clean up while I’m cooking, just so that I can eat dinner without having to look at dirty dishes. If my wife is cooking, I follow her around the kitchen cleaning.
 Speaking of, stuff makes me nervous. If there’s too much clutter around me, I stop what I'm doing and clean until everything is put away, or thrown away.
 I’m super sensitive to smells. I can tell you what you last cooked in your kitchen based upon the smell. Seasonings, side, and main course.
 I can’t do two things at once. Very literally, if I’m making a sandwich while talking on the phone, I stop listening and start spreading the Grey Poupon mustard.
 I don’t like directions when I’m working on a project. I’d rather screw it up and redo it than have someone tell me how to do it.Like what you've been reading so far? Why stop?

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the story of a hero (and by hero, I mean you)

This is the fourth part of a weekly blog series, where I'll be posting an excerpt from my upcoming book, Living Forward, Looking Backward, right here, each week.

If you missed the first posts, go back and check out Part 1 , Part 2, or Part 3.

The Story of a Hero (You)

- it’s the ordinary people who become our biggest heroes -

Our heroes always start out as regular guys. If you saw someone who was born into paranormal circumstances or with some supernatural ability, you’d expect them to show up… but our real heroes start as everyday people.

I felt antsy after another eight months at the consulting firm. I was working on a new case with a larger team and I was performing really well, but I wanted something different. My work had become too structured. I was confined to the narrow lanes of financial models and lawyers and I longed to explore other areas of business. So, I began making arrangements to launch my own startup company.

The startup process gave me newfound energy. I was invigorated by the unknowns inherent to founding a company. I woke up excited each day despite staying out until midnight at different events around Chicago’s startup scene. It became easier to find purpose in my daily routines.

I also took up training for an Ironman triathlon after my last case with Chris. After being enclosed in the four walls of our office every day, I needed an outlet. My roommate, Daniel, said he was up for the adventure, too. He’s ultra-competitive, so there was no way he’d have let me tackle the challenge alone. This is a guy who’s never lost a game of backyard football in his career, not only because he’s the fastest one on the field, but because he can’t stand to let someone else beat him.

Daniel and I rode our bike to the gym, lifted weights, and swam before riding to our respective consulting firms each morning. My attire became more and more casual that spring (I went from the office’s typical business slacks to Gap khakis) and I billed less time to clients. When I wasn’t training, I spent time at long lunches with potential investors, business partners, and other entrepreneurs to develop my idea for a startup.

In late June, I met an entrepreneur named Brian for lunch. Earlier that week, a mutual friend had said to me, “You know, I think Brian’s a guy you could work with; I’ll introduce you two.” Brian wore blue wood glasses and had an enchanting charisma about him. There was a magnetism in the way he spoke and the words he chose. When I pitched him the company I wanted to build, he quickly sold me on his idea instead. He was creating a platform that would help small nonprofits without full-time fundraising staff raise enough money to expand their programs and impact.

Two weeks later, I decided I was in. I’d leave my consulting firm to help Brian build the dream. I met him for lunch once more to talk about details, ownership, and what papers I needed to put my John Hancock on. Two weeks after that (my one-year anniversary at the firm no less), I left my consulting job to start working on our new venture.

Brian and I hit it off immediately. Our complimentary personalities made us perfect co-founders. Brian generally ignores schedules and deadlines while I obsess over hitting goals and staying on target. He sees the vision; I see the process. We both see the world through rose-colored lenses, and we became fast friends outside the office. I also continued training for October’s Ironman race as I opened this entirely new chapter of my life. I packed my days full of life as an entrepreneur-triathlete.

I liked the pace of my life. I was single and uninterested in dating. I was content to work, train, eat Thai food, and repeat. At a certain point, my neighborhood Thai restaurant even knew my phone number. I’d call to place a takeout order as soon as I’d leave our office in the Chicago Loop. I’d ask Pauly, the hostess, how her night was going, and I’d let her know that I’d be by the restaurant in 15 minutes. If Daniel was working late, I’d order for two. I actually liked my routine for the first time in my life. I was working toward two big goals, building a company and racing triathlons, and that was energizing.

I opened my eyes and grabbed my phone to look at the time – 4:30 a.m. I realized what day it was and I felt awake enough to get out of bed. It was October 5th. Race day. I climbed down from the top bunk and peeked into the bottom to see what state of being Daniel was in. It was early, so he was still asleep. The day couldn’t have come quickly enough for me. I couldn’t stay in bed.

We were in a small, European-style Airbnb in Calella, Spain. It was tucked into the third floor of a building only accessible on foot. The roads in Calella are too narrow to drive cars. Aside from three main strips that cars can access, Calella is a quaint pedestrian-only coastal town with unique food and family-run corner stores. On this particular weekend, blue Ironman flags were hung in every window.

I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a container of baby formula from the shelf. I spooned out two scoops of the formula into some warm water, mixed it together, and tasted the first part of my pre-race breakfast. It didn’t taste very good. I needed the extra calories, however, and the formula wouldn’t give my stomach any digestive issues (a triathlete’s worst enemy).

I stepped onto our balcony with my milk. The balcony wasn’t spacious, four square feet at most, but it was enough to get outside and feel the weather. It was raining so hard I could hear a loud slap as each drop hit the cobblestone streets below me. Later that morning, Daniel and I would start our 140.6-mile journey up and down Barcelona’s coastal highways and Calella’s narrow beachfront paths. The rain brought a palpable humidity despite the strong morning breeze. I wondered if it would let up before the race started.       

“Should have expected rain,” I mumbled, stepping back inside.

“Morning, Pops,” I said as my dad emerged from his bedroom.

He reached high up into the air to stretch away the nighttime stiffness, grinning as he did so. He’s always had this distinctive smile in the morning. It’s like the day is full of secrets to him, treasures he can’t wait to unearth. I imagined his stretch was just him practicing for the finish line. I knew he’d be there waiting for me, smiling with his fists raised high in the air as I ran down the finisher’s chute. He’d certainly flown a long way for one race but he’d always been there for me growing up. It felt right to have him with me on race day.

 “Well, it’s raining,” I informed him.

 “Oh man, I forgot my rain suit,” he groaned, walking into the kitchen. “What a drag.”

I laughed, knowing what he meant. He wasn’t disappointed it was raining. He was just sad to miss the perfect chance to break out his bright green rain gear. To put this in perspective, my dad loves gear. Gear of all kinds. He says there’s no such thing as bad circumstances. Just unprepared people without the right tools.

A few years earlier, my dad flew to Knoxville, Tennessee, to watch my first triathlon. I was racing 70 miles with a fever in pouring, 50-degree rain on a flooded racecourse. He stood outside for the whole race, smiling in that luminous green rain suit and running the last quarter mile with me. I had wanted to tell my dad how grateful I was that he was there – just like he always was – but I couldn’t talk very well. My voice was barely audible after racing in the rain with a 101-degree fever for almost six hours. Even if my voice was working properly, I’m not sure I could have properly articulated how I felt.

I was having the same challenge that morning in Calella. I wanted him to know how grateful I was to be standing with him in that little Spanish kitchen. I felt peaceful, more confident because he was there with me. It wouldn’t have felt like race day without him.

Before I could think of the right thing to say, Daniel declared he was awake, “Well, I’m going to drown before I make it out of the water, so we might as well just get this thing started!”

The pitch of his trademark laugh rose above the roar of the rainstorm outside. I dismissed his doom and gloom, knowing full well he’d finish the race in great shape. Daniel’s nerves always spiral into a verbal panic of the most impossible, defeating scenarios, and how they’ll surely get the best of him. I was glad he shares his thoughts out loud, though; it gave me a chance to shoot down the negativity.

“Want some?” I asked, handing him the baby formula.

“Nope,” he said, grabbing my glass. “But I’ll drink it anyway.”

“Hey Pops, can you toss me that bar?” I pointed to the coconut chocolate granola bar in the pocket of his backpack.

I looked out at the ocean and watched the stormy waves rise and fall as the sun crept over the horizon. The race’s start time had been delayed by over an hour at this point. The lightning was beginning to dissipate too. I was hopeful we’d be able start our race soon.

“I’ve already peed in my wetsuit twice. I’ll have nothing left in the tank by the time we start this thing!” Daniel exclaimed, pointing to the wet sand around him.

I laughed because it was true. We’d been sitting in our wetsuits for too long. I was trying to munch on food and drink water as we waited for the weather to pass. I wasn’t sure what felt more tumultuous – the waves stirred up by the storm, or a few hundred high-strung triathletes impatiently waiting to tear into the course.

“The radar shows everything clearing in 20 minutes,” my dad said, handing me his backpack. “You guys should be good to go soon. I’ll get your shoes and jackets home after you start. Need me to do anything else?”

“Nope, I think we’re set. Thanks for hanging out, Pops.”

We heard a megaphone blare from a few yards down the beach, “Attention athletes. Be advised. Due to weather delays, we’re cutting the course time limits by two hours. Your swim course cutoff will remain the same, but both the bike and run courses will pull athletes off one hour earlier, with 15 total hours allowed. Thank you!”

“Awesome. A good mental pre-race boost,” Daniel laughed.

I kept my mind occupied and touched the tattoo, “2 Corinthians 4:16-18” running down my inner forearm. “So we do not lose heart… for this light, momentary affliction is preparing for ourselves an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…’”

I was beginning to drone. Droning is when your mind fades in and out, but your body keeps moving forward. You’re no longer actively thinking when you drone. You can even forget what’s happened in the last few moments, despite the fact you’re still technically awake and pressing onward. I was on mile 18 of the marathon at this point. No man’s land. Mile 18 of the run course is mile 132 of the overall Ironman course, so I was far enough along that I couldn’t give up, but I was far enough away from the finish that sweet relief felt unattainable.

I turned away from Calella’s spectator circle to head down the darkening, empty beach trail for my final eight miles. I was feeling fine physically (relatively speaking). I had raced smart and set a good pace, fueling up along the way. I could tell I wasn’t getting enough sugars to my brain, however. My thoughts came and went as my body craved glucose but I just couldn’t stomach another packet of fruity energy gel. I had probably ingested 20 of them in the last 10 hours.

 “Way to go, sonny-boy!” I heard my Dad yell, looking out from behind his camera.

I heard him before I saw him. He was crouched down with his camera, taking one final shot before the last rays of sunlight left us. He had been sitting there for the last hour, waiting for me to run by, smiling the whole time. I decided then that I didn’t have to suffer down another sport gel. My dad gave me a greater mental boost than any squeezable packet of sugar could.

“Sorry about your shoes, guys. I thought I could dry them out but it didn’t work out so well,” my dad handed me a melted Nike running shoe.

I had to laugh. After leaving the beach at the start of the race, he took our rain-soaked clothes and shoes back to our Airbnb and stuck them in the dryer before walking to the finish line. He figured that after hours of standing and racing in the rain, we’d appreciate some dry, warm clothes. The problem, however, was that the dryer had heated up our shoes past their melting point and it totally fried the soles. They melted and then re-hardened into a deformed, unusable shape.

I tried to force one of my shoes back into its original form but it proved to be a fool’s errand. It snapped back into an awkwardly curved shape. “I’ll pay for a new pair,” my dad offered quickly. I could tell he thought he’d just ruined our post-race celebration.

I reassured him, “Thanks, but no need. You flew here by yourself to stand outside for 12 hours. In the rain, no less. That means more to me than shoes ever will.”

He smiled again, relenting, “Alright, but at least let me buy you dinner tomorrow.”

“That’s a deal.”

The fact that my dad had traveled all the way to Spain just to cheer me on amazed me. Yes, he was my dad, but still. He could have used the time to do something for himself. He depleted his vacation time and allowed work and his other responsibilities to stack up back home. He even insisted on paying his fair share of our meals and Airbnb’s. After countless years of being there for me, he could have let me treat him for once. Heck, he could have just woken up early to send me a good luck text message from the comfort of his own bed in the U.S. Instead, he was right there by my side.

He was my hero.

We packed up our race gear and drove down the coast to Barcelona after a long night of randomly waking up to quench our bodies’ cravings for more food. We planned to hang around the city for a few days before shipping our gear back to the U.S. and flying to Brussels to tour more of Europe. As our shuttle driver navigated down the coastal highway, I opened the book I had started reading on the flight over. It was called Orthodoxy by GK Chesterton. Although it was dense, I liked Chesterton’s writing. He’s one of those writers who makes you re-read every page to make sure you’ve caught everything.

Orthodoxy is, in a way, a book about Chesterton’s own story. He uses his autobiography to outline a rational case for belief in a God, an Author of life, by recounting memories and examples from his own life. Each chapter details a season of his life that ultimately swayed him to move from an atheistic, self-sufficient worldview to faith in a divine Creator. In one section, Chesterton details the role that fairy tales and imagination played in his conversion, and I came to a section in which he muses about the concept of heroes:

The old fairy tales make the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons.[i]

As I looked up from my book and watched my dad sitting in the front seat, Chesterton’s proposition made sense to me. True heroes do always start out as normal, regular guys. If you saw someone who was born into paranormal circumstances or with some supernatural ability, you’d expect them to show up in the ways they had been born to. Saving lives, helping cats trapped on rooftops during a flood - that kind of stuff. Our real heroes start out as everyday people. They’re ordinary humans who face life alongside us with unfailing courage, consistency, and smiles.

As we drove on, I thought about how my dad always came through for me. When I first signed up for the race, I figured there was a slim chance he would fly to Barcelona. I assumed it would be the first time he’d be forced to support me from afar. Yet, there he was. Sitting in our shuttle, smiling and watching the coastline roll by.

My dad and mom, together, have helped me reach every victory in my life. They’re the quiet heroes behind every achievement to my name. By most standards, people will say that co-founding a company and competing in Ironman-distance triathlons are impressive accomplishments. While I’d never wave that flag, it would be easy to let people believe I’ve attained these things under my grit and determination alone.

That wouldn’t be accurate, however. The truth is that my heroes empowered me to do those things.             

Growing up, I was given the chance to travel, play sports, try new things, and graduate with a college degree debt-free. The opportunities my childhood afforded me – all enabled by my parents – forged a fearlessness in me. Through each experience, my parents reinforced that I could be whatever I set out to be. Whether that was an athlete (as they took pictures at my soccer games and made me feel like the most important player) or an entrepreneur (they paid me $5 to cook dinner and let me draw menus while pretending our kitchen was a restaurant), they always told me, “Go for it, Nate.”

To this day, I approach life with an undying optimism and firm belief that everything will work out just fine because my parents took on so many of the typical childhood worries for me. When I quit my consulting job, co-founded a company debt-free, and bought a bike to race an Ironman despite dealing with chronic asthma and anemia, I felt more grateful than ever.

My heroes came through once again.

Everyone is looking for a hero. Everybody wants some type of life-giving and affirming presence in their story at the very least. That's just how our Author designed us.

When we come to understand that we’re all characters who play a small role in the Big Story of our world, we see why we’re drawn into the popular Hollywood-hero storyline. We turn out in droves to watch someone really impressive and good-looking swoop down to save the day because it’s part of who we are.

A book in the Bible explains this. Genesis documents the history of our creation, and it gives us a reference point to grasp just how far we’ve strayed from God’s original design. Genesis tell us that we like to control the storyline, ignoring our Author’s instructions, and when we try to direct the narrative on our own we screw up and find ourselves in need of saving. Our need for a savior dates all the way back to Adam and Eve.

We all need different heroes because we all have different life perspectives. From your vantage point, you feel what you need and want in life. So, your hero will be someone who reflects that. My heroes come in different forms, however, because I have a different life story. The common denominator between us is that our true heroes always begin as ordinary people.

While celebrities and world leaders can certainly be considered heroes in their own right, greater meaning, connection, and influence always comes from the everyday heroes who are closest to us – mentors, parents, coaches, etc. We may admire the people we watch on TV and never meet, but rarely will they shape our lives in a truly profound way.

Now, if we can accept this idea of a creation story – that we’re all part of God’s Big Story and our world of intellect, emotion, and morality wasn’t formed by a random, cosmic accident – we can define our heroes as those who shape our character in the Big Story for good.

C.S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory confirms this, and it lays out an interesting consideration. Lewis says:

[E]very time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature... Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.[ii]

Lewis is pointing out that we’re not static beings. People are much more complex than that. Characters all develop as the plotline progresses and we, as characters in the Big Story, also change in one direction or another. Over the course of many years, the people we interact with either push us in the direction of joy and harmony with our story’s Creator, or they push us towards hate and a state of war with our Creator.

Therefore, if we begin to see our heroes as the people who influence our stories in a heavenly way, we have a new standard for how we define who is (and is not) a hero. We’ll also have a standard to define who the ultimate Hero (capital “H”) of our story is – the one who can restore us to a heavenly state, completely and eternally, at the end of our lives.

Besides, if only the one-time, exceptional feats are our metrics for identifying who our heroes are, how will we ever feel we’ve arrived? Daily routines, predictable responsibilities, dishes, bills, and to-do lists don’t preclude us from extraordinary action. We just need to reframe what we define as the essentials for heroism.

Here’s the driving point behind all this. Although it feels backward, being the ordinary ‘you’ is actually the prerequisite for becoming someone’s hero. It’s also important to recognize how your heroes have shaped your life for the better.

So, would you consider yourself a hero?

I don’t consider myself a hero, and if I were to hazard a guess, I’d say you most likely feel, “Of course not, I’m just (insert first name here).” But if a hero doesn’t need a cape, and we can find heroes among ordinary people who step up to positively influence our lives, there’s nothing stopping you from becoming someone’s hero, right?

[i]Chesterton, G. K. Orthodoxy. United States: Popular Classics Publishing, 2012.

[ii] Lewis, C. S. The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005.

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my "oh, shit!" moment (and what I learned from it)

This is the third part of the weekly blog series, where I'll be posting a new excerpt from my upcoming book, Living Forward, Looking Backward, right here each week.

If you missed the first two posts, go back and check out Part 1  and Part 2.

My "Oh, Shit!" Moment- the bigger the failure, the more learning you gain -

As backward as it felt in the moment, I realized that one of my life’s most meaningful lessons had just been delivered through a devastating mistake. The bigger my failure, the more colossal my loss, the more learning I gained.

Once Greg and I were back stateside, my story continued in the normal workingman’s world of riding a train to and from an office building each day. I worked for a consulting firm in a fancy downtown Chicago skyscraper, and I considered it my first “real job.” There was a human resources team, a closet full of pens and notepads, 10 different options of coffee, and people who worked the same hours every day to take home the same paycheck every two weeks.

Before my consulting job, I helped build the sales team at a startup company that distributed branded tea. I also worked at a leadership-training nonprofit, and I’d had some other short-term gigs. This, however, was a major-league consulting firm. Our job was to provide financial valuation expertise to headlining legal cases and the law firms that handled them – Apple vs. Samsung, for example.

“Oh, shit.”

I don’t really cuss. I don’t have anything against those who do, it’s just not me. My friends laugh when I let a curse slip because it’s something of a rarity. It wasn’t a slip this time, however. I really meant it. I had screwed up big time and I felt horrible. I’d been given a tremendous amount of responsibility as a first-year consultant and I dropped the ball at the single, most critical moment of my project.

This was my “Oh, shit!” moment.

My job was to build the financial models behind the cases that vice presidents brought to the firm. Simply put - I created really, really big Excel spreadsheets that translated a bunch of raw data into one single price so that a lawyer knew how much money a certain technology or legal case was worth, and under what conditions. That doesn’t sound like fun, but it was. Building financial models is like putting together a big puzzle. It was tedious work sifting through thousands of pages of deposition testimonies, corporate files, and legal documents to collect the data we needed to create the models, but once we did, I liked the intellectual challenge.

We worked as a small team. Jeff, Chris, Jon, Steve, Ashley, Ahmed and I were all pretty tight-knit. It was good to have friends in the office during those late nights. We all worked on the same cases, but after a few months on the job, a vice president, Chris, needed help with a new case from just one consultant.

The consultants who typically worked on Chris’ cases were all tied up with other projects. I was known for being able to chew through large stacks of legal documents fairly quickly (I’m a fast reader) so I was given the chance to own the financial model for Chris’ case. I was thrilled. It was an assignment I could build my reputation on. The case itself was intriguing, too. We were valuing the technology for a videogame system, which I found more appealing than some of the cases other consultants were stuck with (valuing parking garages or gravel piles, for example).

We had two months to produce a 100-page report and an equally large Excel model, which would be the final products for our clients. Chris would write the report and I would back up his conclusions with the financial model and corporate data.

The case progressed smoothly for the first month. The second month, I essentially lived in the office while trying to complete my work in time. I didn’t really mind the long hours, however, and my roommate, Daniel, also worked late. Plus, our clients gave me permission to put dinner on their expense account if I worked more than 10 hours a day. Free food, baby! I even opted to work late some nights just to expense my dinner. I was still building my bank account balance back to five digits after my summer travels.

“How’s that model coming along?” Jeff asked, setting a small orange basketball on my desk.

Jeff and I sat next to each other, separated by a low-profile cubicle wall. He had a picture of a fighter jet strung across one wall of his cube and a small basketball hoop stuck to the other. Whenever we needed a break, we’d take shots from different spots in the office and distract our other cube-mates.

Chris and I were about two weeks away from our deadline, so I shared with Jeff, “Pretty good. Coming along well. Chris is having me take a shot at writing some of the narrative for the report, so that’s cool.”

“Good stuff man, that’s not supposed to happen after just a few months in your role. Nice work,” Jeff encouraged me.

It was good to hear him say that. Jeff had more experience and a grueling yearlong case under his belt. It was one of the infamous war stories told around the office. He even had to leave his family’s Christmas party to battle through the case that year.

“Thanks dude. Chris is making my life pretty easy – he’s fun to work with. I’m diggin’ it.”

Jeff laughed in agreement, “I’ve never worked for Chris directly, but that sounds like him. Whenever he’s at Lloyd’s, I’ve never been able to buy myself or anyone else a drink. He always picks up the tab, even if he just sees you across the room and isn’t sitting with you.”

“Ha! Don’t I know it,” I grinned.

Lloyd’s was the bar on the first floor of our building. I had been the beneficiary of Chris’ dependable generosity many times. On half-price appetizers night, he would walk through the office to rally as many people as he could to go down to Lloyd’s. There wasn’t a single staff member who didn’t love Chris. While there were some vice presidents who you knew would be ruthless at worst and uninteresting at best, Chris defied every stereotype. I actually enjoyed walking into his office every morning.

I continued, “You know, it’s funny. To me, Chris is totally understated and humble, yet the most interesting man in the world. He speaks quietly and doesn’t push any bravado across the table at you. But if you begin to ask him questions, you learn that the guy runs trails barefoot, builds drones in his garage, and races snowmobiles. I’m sure there’s more I don’t even know about him yet.”

“Nate, new news. Stop by my office, okay?” Chris said as he walked by my cube.

I always appreciated that Chris was human enough to walk to my cube to talk with me. He didn’t just beckon me with an email that said, “Come here. Now.” I wondered what would be waiting for me behind his office door. Part of me hoped Chris had just added a new set of exotic fish to his five-foot tall tank. The realistic part of me said it couldn’t be that fun.

“Hey Chris, what’s up?” I asked, standing in the doorway waiting to be motioned in.

We were two days away from our project’s deadline, when we’d submit the final report to our clients and the courthouse. He waved me in and brought me up to speed.

“We had some new documents sent to us overnight. The opposing counsel just released them. An amateur move – they’re trying to spin our wheels with last-minute data. There could be nothing in the files, or… there could be something major in them, and they’re hoping we don’t find it. Either way, we have to know, and we have to know soon.”

My nerves began to tingle inside me but I replied calmly, “Sure. Anything else?”

“Yeah, one more thing. Make sure someone QC’s the model for us,” Chris said, referring to a “quality control” process where someone outside our case double-checked my work for accuracy.

I grabbed the small, black hard drive from Chris’ desk and reassured him, “Yeah, will do. Dave’s helping me out with that.”

I took the long way back to my desk and reassured myself I wouldn’t find any bombshell documents waiting on the hard drive. Most likely, it was just a stall tactic. Besides, if there was something material lurking among the new files, we’d have the chance to argue that a last-minute document shouldn’t be allowed to influence a report compiled over the course of months.

Yet, I couldn’t shake the feeling that bombshell document or not, this surprise wasn’t going to be a good one. I even missed what Jeff asked me as I walked by, consumed in thought.

“Hey. Hey. Hey! Nate! What was that all about?” Jeff said after managing to grab my attention.

“Oh, just a little gift from opposing counsel – more docs to go through before our report is due. You know, the one due in two days...” I filled Jeff in on the hard drive and how now, for the next 48 hours, I’d be a ball of nervous energy wondering if I had missed something important.

“Oh man, that’s a bummer. Sorry about that. Can I help out?” Jeff offered.

“Eh, it’s fine. It’s only like another 100 files. I should be alright. Thanks though,” I shrugged and plugged the new hard drive into my laptop.

“I think we’re in decent shape – I’m going to grab a sandwich. Do you want something to eat?” I asked Chris, looking down at my watch.

My watch’s gold hands told me it was 7 p.m. – five hours before our report’s midnight deadline. I already knew that, though. I had been watching the clock all day to ensure I left enough time for last-minute edits. My parents gave me the watch as a gift when I first started working at the firm. It had a brown leather band and a gold-rimmed face, and I felt important and professional when I wore it.

On this particular night, however, my watch felt more like a tyrannical dictator. It was shackled to my wrist as an oppressive reminder that I wouldn’t have enough time to fully review our report before submitting it. The minutes continued to melt by, counting down to our midnight deadline. I figured that if I walked out of the office to get a sandwich, I’d distract my nerves and shake the dreadful thought that I had missed some critically important detail.

Chris typed fiercely onto his keyboard. “No, I’m fine. I just need to make one final change to one of these sections based on the docs we got – you go ahead.”

Chris called me shortly after I arrived back in the office with a grilled chicken panini. “Hey Nate, we’re going to make a minor update to the royalty rate – can you make sure this gets changed in the model?”

I set my half-eaten chicken and tomato pita bread on his desk and I rolled the change through my spreadsheet to update the final numbers.

It was getting close to midnight. I felt a bead of hot sweat slip down my back as I read through everything one last time, scanning for typos, spelling errors, or other items that the opposing counsel might use to discredit the veracity of Chris’ report. After not finding any additional tweaks, I pressed “send.” Our report was officially submitted to the court and forever sealed into the legal records. It couldn’t be changed, so come hell or high water, the project was done.

I eased back into my chair, believing we had completed our case. I drew a deep breath for what felt like the first time in two days and I looked at my watch again. Now, it felt more like a scoreboard, congratulating us for crossing the finish line.

“Want some?” Chris asked, wheeling his desk chair over to a case of black-labeled wine bottles in the corner of his office.

“Oh yeah! Thanks.” I accepted and took a more-than-generous sip of wine well-earned. It was good wine to be sure, but it tasted even better knowing we just submitted the report for my first big case.

We began to cherish our wine but our brief stint of joyous relief came to a screeching halt when the computer dinged with an incoming email.

“Uh, Nate…” Chris said, reading the email from our client. “The numbers in the report’s final table don’t match the numbers in the model. They’re off. Why?”

“Oh, shit.”

To this day, I’m not sure if I thought it, said it, or whispered it. I remember with certainty, however, feeling the heaviest, most crushing sinking in my stomach. I wanted that feeling to drag me down below the desk, through all 34 floors of drywall, and right into the basement where I could hide from the firestorm of anger that was sure to be unleashed on me. I had just let down the most trusting and encouraging vice president in the firm. I could own up to my own errors, but the report carried Chris’ reputation. I felt like I had just jammed a knife into Chris’ back.

I was red hot, trapped inside my own clothes. I wanted to run. I looked at my watch, hopelessly deliberating if I’d have enough time to make this right before Father Time declared midnight and decreed my mistake irreversible.

The silence in the room was deafening. I racked my brain for an explanation. I braced myself and came to grips with the fact that I’d watch my livelihood burn before me that night. I was marching toward the gallows. I was sure that my budding consulting career would spoil into nothingness as Chris moved Earth itself with his pent-up rage. I had no doubt that a tsunami of vitriol had been welling up inside of Chris, and my error had just triggered his ocean of wrath.

“Okay,” Chris said. “Let’s go home.”

I blinked.

“What?” It was all I could muster.

My initial horror transitioned into a slightly more manageable panic as I thought of solutions. I had to fix this; I was responsible. I was ready to sleep in my work clothes for the next three days, working ‘round the clock to pay some type of overtime penance for the catastrophe I’d just wrought upon my boss. While fixing the report would be a quick process, I wanted Chris to unload hundreds more hours of work on me, just so I could claw my way back into good standing with him. Your reputation is everything in consulting, especially in legal settings.  

“Yeah, it’s time. There’s nothing more for us to do tonight,” Chris said before his phone rang. “Hello, this is Chris.”

I couldn’t hear the conversation on the other end. The phone masked the lawyer’s words, which I assumed were scathing criticisms. I imagined they skipped all pleasantries and started off by yelling at Chris, “What the hell happened here?! It’s in the court record now! This is permanent! We look foolish!”

Chris spoke evenly into the phone, “This is what happens when we have documents given to us last minute, with changes in the case strategy and final edits all needed at the same time.”

To my disbelief, Chris continued, “I missed it. It was my fault. I just missed this one. We’ll send a redlined version tomorrow so you can resubmit it to the court.”

He spoke calmly, as if he had just woken up from a nap on some office hammock. I was dumbfounded and motionless. I stared at Chris as he set the phone in its cradle. “I think I’ll take a cab home tonight. It’s too late for the train now. You should do the same, Nate.”

I couldn’t believe it. Chris had accepted the blame for my mistake, flat out. No yelling, no crippling amount of extra work, no saving himself by casting the first-year consultant to the wolves. Somehow, he was genuinely concerned that I made it home safely.

“Uh, okay. But what can I do to help out tonight?” I asked once more. I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep without doing something to dig myself out of my hole. I didn’t want grace to come that easily, you see.

“Go home Nate. There’s nothing more for us to do tonight. Sleep,” Chris ordered.

Do you remember how we said in Part 1 that stories keep things simple? That stories and the principle of paradox help us discover greater meaning in our everyday lives? This is never more visible than against the backdrop of our greatest failures, which often leave us confused and frustrated.

There has never been a perfect person in the history of stories. Well, at least in the history of interesting stories. Characters inevitably screw up as the plot unfolds, and a story’s core conflict is always rooted in the main character’s shortcomings. This is crucial because we all crave to see conflict resolved. Imperfect characters keep us engaged, sitting in a movie theater or reading a book for hours.

If not outright failure, at the very minimum, we prefer the characters we watch to have some type of personality flaw or past regret plaguing them. We relate to wounded characters. We root for them to pull through in the end because it mirrors our own experiences – we’re not perfect people either. I mean, can you imagine reading a book about someone who does everything right, and faces no opposition whatsoever? Of course not. We’d either tear the book in two before finishing it, or we’d finish it and feel like losers by comparison.

The same concept applies to our daily lives. While we shy away from conflict and we fear failure, these experiences serve as open doors to grace, growth, and new lessons learned.  We mature as we deal with the fallout from our mistakes. We become more interesting characters. If we can accept – and in fact, demand – flawed characters as critical to the stories we watch and read, we must learn to do the same in our own lives instead of viewing failure as a fait accompli. This perspective is the path to finding greater meaning in our most frustrating letdowns and confusing defeats.

I sat in a cab watching Jimmy Kimmel Live on the back of the passenger seat. It was helpful to focus on something other than spreadsheets, lawyers, and office buildings. I turned to watch the city lights stream by as the cabbie turned down Orleans, crossing the Chicago River. The city was still wide awake at 1:00 a.m. I wondered if the shadowy outlines in office windows were people huddled over Word documents, meticulously checking their work into the early hours of the morning to ensure they were error-free for tomorrow’s presentations.          

“How do you screw up as a cab driver?” I thought to myself, legitimately considering a career change. I debated if I’d be able to sit in a car for 10 hours a day and decided against it. Crashing into other cars for half the salary didn’t feel like a good trade.

The cabbie pulled up to my apartment and I tipped him double. He’d driven me home accident-free and it’s not every day, after all, that you get your job done without screwing it up.

I slid out from the back seat and walked into my apartment before dropping my keys into a wooden bowl. A loud, clanging noise echoed from our 15-foot tall ceilings. I wanted to wake up my roommate, Daniel, just so that he could ask me about my day. Then I’d have someone to commiserate with. No sound came from his room, however. I didn’t have a choice. Maybe it was best to go to bed pretending it was a normal day.

I crumpled into my sheets and rolled onto my back with a groan. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I tried to grasp what exactly I should have been learning from my mistake. While I had screwed up before – hurt people I loved, failed exams, and other run-of-the-mill missteps – I had never fallen flat in such a way that I directly torpedoed someone else’s reputation, with the entire blame landing squarely on me. I racked my brain for some type of lesson to help me move forward and avoid repeating one of my most public failures.

Sleep evaded me as I stared at the ceiling’s plastered ridges and grooves. I ruminated over Chris so calmly instructing me, “Go home Nate. There’s nothing more for us to do tonight.” Those words haunted me. They didn’t offer any opportunity to atone for what I’d done. I botched our report in the grandest of fashions, yet Chris had no less respect for me. He treated me no differently. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

As backward as it felt in the moment, I discovered that one of my life’s most meaningful lessons had just been delivered in the form of a devastating mistake. The bigger my failure, the more colossal my mistake, the more learning I gained.

What’s more, Chris embodied a perfect picture of grace. He had entrusted me with our report, granting me full autonomy and responsibility. Still, I fell short. I missed the mark. There was no way I’d be able to repay him, and I knew that even if I could, he wouldn’t have allowed it. Chris readily accepted the blame for my error as soon as he discovered it. He showed me that the harder we fall, the more grace we receive.

In the same way, the collective story of our world, the “Big Story,” says that our author (God) didn’t create flawless characters (us) who produce error-free reports. Instead, He knew imperfect characters who can decide to love Him or walk away from Him, choosing conflict and a broken relationship, make for a better story. Knowing full well we’d fail, our Creator not only proceeded to write us into existence, He made grace central to our story’s resolving event – death on a wooden cross we built for his son over 2,000 years ago.

In my finest moments, that sentence, “Go home, Nate. There’s nothing more to do tonight,” rings out when I’m affected by a friend, colleague, or family member’s mistake. Chris helped me see that if I’ve been given a second chance, how can I demand perfection from someone else? I try to ask myself in moments of mindfulness and my own missteps: what’s the lesson hiding behind this failure?  

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