Something I’ve been reflecting on lately, I suffer from chronic optimism. I generally believe things are going to work out. Certainly some of that belief comes from the identity I inhabit and the privilege it has afforded me, and especially when it comes to the personal level, I am fortunate and blessed that in much of my life, things have been “ok” without me having to influence much of my surroundings. However, the older I get, the more I understand my part active part in manifesting that “ok-ness.”
Pictured: me
Certainly there was the Cancer, that was probably my first big personal tangle with “maybe not OK.” And I may talk about that a bit here, but I don’t want this to become another “Cancer” post, because there’s also my career pivot, work that I’ve done with friends and loved ones to help them find their version of “ok,” colleagues I’ve helped coach out of a “not ok” status quo, etc. I’ve also encountered what “not ok” looks like played out. Without getting too specific out of respect for the individuals, I’ve seen what family tragedy looks like, I’ve seen what toxic relationships look like, and on the more “macro” side of ok, I’ve certainly seen a country sliding into a dangerous version of “not ok.” I was so sure that Trump wouldn’t win in 2016. I was super wrong about that, and a lot of what happened after was very much “not ok.”
Still though, I suppose you could call me “glass half-full,” and maybe in some cases toxically positive, though I try really hard not to cross that threshold. I also don’t suffer from diagnosed chronic anxiety or adhd, and am a fairly neurotypical, “straight presenting” white cis male. It’s important, if I’m going to talk about “being ok,” that I identify those things at the outset, because there’s a certain degree of that effort that is just easier for me, my struggle is not as acute as some people’s. Even the Cancer, in retrospect, wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been, as some people struggle with, or tragically lose their struggle with. Fingers crossed it doesn’t come back with a vengeance… always a possibility.
Making it “OK.”
Speaking of the Cancer, I think that’s a good place to explore the idea of “making it ok.” It’s been a year since all that, and life has been really good since then. Things taste a little sweeter, love feels a little brighter, everything I experience after an encounter with a killer has a bit of a glow on it that I either didn’t notice, or didn’t appreciate before. I’ve also received a lot of very well-intentioned, positive attention. People tell me they respect my strength, my candor, my vulnerability, all of which is meaningful to me, but it leaves me with a strange feeling. I couldn’t put it into words until recently, when a beloved colleague said to me “you were always just so positive the whole time.” That brought a “click” moment into my thoughts. My immediate response was “well, what choice did I have?” In some ways the positivity was a reflex, but the perspective afforded to me by a year of distance from that treatment has brought some things into focus. It was my defense, my active participation in the treatment. I made choices during that time not to despair (though, there was a moment at the beginning that one day I’ll have the courage to write about). I knew intrinsically that my choices were to keep moving forward, to invest in my community with the energy I could muster, and to keep trying in every space that my body would allow me to try. I chose (and my body allowed me) not to take a lot of sick time or go on a leave, I was able to return to work every day after an infusion, and I was able to excel at work even through the treatment. My attitude was one of “let’s get through this, and let it be the crucible that forges something stronger on the other side.”
Again, I had benefits that not everyone has, so I want to make it clear that not every battle with a life-threatening illness can look like mine, and that doesn’t make anyone’s individual struggle any less noble or brave, its important to me that I don’t come across that way.
The point of all of the above is that yes, I chose to live positively, because that is what I needed to do to manifest the reality of “it’s going to be ok.”
Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to help others, in perhaps more subtle ways, to manifest their struggle into a crucible. Over the course of the past year, helping others, reflecting, on my own struggles, and climbing the proverbial “ladder” at work, I’ve started to have an inkling of how to get from unsure to ok.
Doing the work - walking the path to belief in the “ok”
What I (perhaps inelegantly) was driving at with the Cancer story above is this: the work for me was to visualize positivity, exert control where I could, and keep moving forward. I’m starting to believe that this simple framework is a helpful one in a variety of contexts. I hesitate to say “all” contexts, but maybe? More thought and direct challenge is needed before I can say that with confidence, so for now I’ll settle with “most.”
The “work” can take any number of forms, highly dependent on the context of the struggle. It can be as simple and micro as “I need to find motivation to get to the grocery store and I have 8000 things to do,” to as complicated and macro as “I need to be part of the effort to prevent a vindictive convicted felon from returning to power in this country, which involves motivating an apathetic electorate to vote as though their lives depend on it.” No matter the struggle, the spine is the same:
Visualize positivity - What is the outcome you desire? What does the path look like between where you are now, and where you aim to be? What are the pitfalls that will drag you out of the lane of positivity and into the gutter of despair? How can you center that vision in your efforts to drive towards it?
Exert control where you can - Every problem is a series of loose threads. Which ones can you grab first? What is in reach? In my cancer example, there was an attitude commitment I could make, and we were able to reach out to our community for help with healthy meals rather immediately. In the grocery store example, maybe it’s “open up my calendar and see where my biggest window is.” In the election example, maybe it’s “identify my coalition, and begin consistent outreach to that group.” The act of taking one step towards controlling what you can is such a freeing, inspiring act. One thing, one check mark, one release of dopamine from the brain, can give you the focus and strength to find the next one. Which leads to…
Keep moving forward - “We’re going to advance! Advance! Stop at nothing to advance!!” as the character Thomas Wade in Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem exclaims. This is the grit part. Keep acting. Find the small ways to act on the days you don’t have the energy for the big ways. Once you’ve brought one element of the challenge under control, make that part of your routine, and grab another thread. With the chemo - I processed the emotional trauma of it all by writing. That was one of the early threads I grabbed, and then once I felt at peace with the process, I was able to focus energy on my professional journey, another thread, another step forward. The work never stops, there’s always more to do, but each time we take a step, the uncertainty of the path in front of us solidifies into stable ground, and allows us to keep walking, crawling, running, floating, towards our eventual goal of “being ok.”
Embrace the uncertain, acknowledge the possibility of failure - there is a fourth step I didn’t mention above, but it’s maybe the most important one. If I only posit the first three, there are plenty of folks out there who would justifiably accuse me of naïveté. No matter the effort, there is the possibility that steps 1-3 won’t be enough to get you where you want to be. Some things are bigger than your ability to control. I’ve found that if I don’t acknowledge that there is at least the possibility of failure, if I try to relegate that thought to the back of my mind, I’ll have a harder and harder time ignoring the niggling feeling of impending doom, and my efforts will sour. However, if I acknowledge what failure looks like, and keep that knowledge present in my overall picture of the journey I’m on, then it feels less threatening, and I’m more able to avoid the wrong turns or pitfalls that will hasten that reality. It’s tough, because failure can be varying degrees of scary. In the grocery store example, failure looks like caving and ordering instacart, thus spending more and impacting my monthly budget in a negative way. Not so scary. In the Cancer example though… failure is a lot scarier, a lot more existential, however if I didn’t acknowledge the possibility, it would grow in power until it drove me to depression and sapped me of my positivity, thus robbing me of one of my most important weapons in that battle. Holding that possibility in view can be terrifying, but being real about it is not only important, but crucial in actualizing the result we want.
Now all of those steps need further exploration, and I hope to unpack them each individually in their own, more focused blog post, but I’ll let this serve as an introduction, for now.
Helping others find their OK - a quick story.
So obviously in this next portion, as I reflect on what I have learned since my chemo journey while on my next, professional journey, I start to run into characters outside myself where I can share what I’ve learned, and help them find their OK. A lot of my immediate community reads my blog, so out of respect for their privacy, what I’ve done in the following section is to fictionalize enough of their story to keep it anonymous, while maintaining the core of the learning from my interactions with them.
The story that comes to mind is of a character whom for our purposes we’ll call Nate. Nate is someone who has struggled in his professional pursuits through little fault of his own. He’s been in departments that have consolidated with others, which has caused restructuring and an elimination of his position. He has been involved with managers who have left a vacuum after their departure causing him to be overlooked for promotion, and his career has stagnated. Nate is frustrated, feeling stuck, when through a connection from his network he gets invited to apply for a new position, one with more responsibility and exposure than he’s used to, but one that he is qualified for, provided that he will receive strong guidance and mentoring in the new role.
Nate applies and gets the role, and gets to work, but not without a healthy dose of professional anxiety. Before too long, Nate starts to feel overwhelmed. At this point, Nate is a friend of mine, and he comes to me for advice as I’ve recently navigated a similar professional transition. Nate needs to find his “ok” within his new role, so I share the framework above, and we set out to identifying steps one and two. For starters, what does success look like? For Nate, success will be measured by the results his team achieves over the course of a year. In Nate’s mind, success is beyond his reach, at least initially, and he’s one of those people who always feels like he can do more, so identifying the positivity is a very difficult step for him. Perfection, though the enemy of progress, is a standard Nate holds himself to. I challenge him to see if he can loosen that definition, what does success look like in incremental chunks, if we identify perfection as a challenge to drive us, as opposed to a concrete goal. He decides to identify some benchmarks throughout the year for his team to achieve, and his part in achieving those goals. Good, step one, visualize positivity is complete.
Step two for Nate was also a challenge, what could he control in a year long project? So much of his success will be measured on the performance of his team, so is that truly in his control? I encourage Nate to start small - what is the first area his team collectively needs to improve upon, and how can you help? He focuses in on some small scale performance metrics that will serve the overall team goal, creates a one on one meeting structure between him and his team to both hold them accountable to those metrics and help them understand how to move beyond them, use them to drive their business forward, and starts doing “the work.” Meanwhile, Nate also created strong mentoring relationships, controlling who was in his corner and who he could rely on for guidance, strategy, or just a good old fashioned pep-talk. Step two was achieved for now, and Nate could move on to step 3.
As I’m writing this, I’m realizing that steps 2/3 are basically a cycle that repeats ad infinitum. Nate starts driving the team forward through his 1-1 structure, achieving the early goals he identified in step 1. In order to drive towards that elusive ideal of perfection (knowing and honoring that it is impossible to achieve), he decides to set new challenges for his team, establishing their short term victory as a base line, and encouraging growth beyond the goals they’d already achieved.
Step 4 might need to move to step 2 as I’m thinking about this, I’ll probably revise all of this in the future. But for the sake of Nate’s story, let’s talk about what failure would look like. For Nate, failure in this role would be measured by his team not achieving the results they need to achieve. What would the consequences of that failure be? Well, it depends. If it was a short term goal, then failure would allow Nate and his team the ability to reflect, analyze, recalibrate, and adjust their strategy towards success. If it was repeated failure, and Nate wasn’t able to identify ways to adjust, then it would suggest that Nate wasn’t right for the role. Two different degrees, one more severe than the other, but both important to keep centered while Nate was pursuing the end result.
I’m happy to say that Nate had a phenomenally successful year. On his path to “OK,” Nate may have even begun to find his way towards “great.” He has the respect of his colleagues, a demonstrated record of success, and a bright future within his organization.
Our next “getting to ok:” walking the IVF path.
Ready for a jarring transition?
So, if you’re not new to my blog, you know I’m not shy about getting pretty personal. K and I have been through a lot in the last few years, but we’ve finally arrived at a place where the time in our lives is right to grow our family. It’s a goal we’ve held dear for a long time, but never felt comfortable taking that step.
We’ve been trying since before the chemo, and have suffered multiple miscarriages along our journey (which I have written about and published anonymously, if that’s something you need to read, message me and I will direct you to where you can find it), and have arrived at the conclusion that the right option for us is pursuing IVF.
It’s been hard.
That said, sometimes I tell people that we’re taking that step, and the reaction I get is “oh, I’m so sorry.” Maybe that’s the right thing for some folks to hear, but for me it rings a bit jarringly in my ears. K and I had lunch with a friend and some of his friends a while back, and shared with one of his friends who’d just finished training for a career as a midwife about our plans. Her immediate, unfiltered reaction? “COOL!” I loved it. I asked her to explain why she reacts that way - and her response was multi-faceted, but the facet that stuck with me was that in her view, IVF parents are parents who fight for their kids, so by the time they’re ready to deliver, they’re basically ready for anything that comes their way, helpful in a partnership with a midwife who’s goal is a healthy delivery.
I found that immensely meaningful, and when I think about that interaction in context of what I’ve written in this blog post up until now, I realize that I am finding myself prepared for a journey that is fraught with many twists and turns, where failure is scary, but where positivity is centered firmly in my heart as we take these next steps. Every time we meet with the fertility specialist, a new layer of “control” clicks in. Certainly there’s a lot that we can’t control within this process, but the deeper my understanding of what we are embarking upon becomes, the lesser my fears live forward in my mind.
I undoubtedly will write more about this journey ahead, K and I both believe that things like chemo, IVF, fertility, struggle, etc need to be talked about more. You’ll notice when I do though, that I use first person pronouns. This is intentional, as I do not want to speak for K. Maybe she’ll guest blog about it at some point, but for now it’s safe to say that we agree on much of this, and our journeys will be both individual and collective as we move through this next phase. She will have her own story to tell, I will have mine, and we will have ours.
But no matter where we land, we’ll be OK. And for now, that’s enough.
Thanks for reading - as a reward here’s a picture of the world’s “Ok-est” dog, Radley, being overwhelmed by choice with all his new bark box toys and not being able to commit to playing with any of them.
Thank you for the Ok-est payoff for making it to the end with the dog photo, pal 😂 Appreciate your writing!