Friday reflection

Show us who you are

Dear mighty forces,

My friend and client Mirit Cohen shared a profound reflection on LinkedIn this morning that struck me as the perfect source of inspiration for this Friday’s note.

She wrote,

Is it the future yet?

🤔 As I wrap up a whirlwind tour of conferences across industries this last month+ (Culture Summit, #verge22 , CoreNet Global), “the future” of work, the role of place/real estate, the vitality of human connection, the unique advantages of neurodiverse minds, and the impacts of climate change are sharing conversation in my brain.

🔜 From the time he could talk, my son has been fuzzy on the relational aspects of time. “Yesterday” and “tomorrow,” have both become synonymous with “not now.” What happened before, or after, and the stretch between, any given set of moments, might as well be cotton candy.

📒 Last night I was on a late flight back home from #cng22chicago. My phone’s battery finally died so I was left with good old fashioned pen and paper and my own thoughts. I pulled out the notebook I brought. I forgot that it contained letters I wrote to my children in the early days of the pandemic - a time when I feared the possibility that they’d lose me, and that it was vital for them to know how much I loved, and what I knew about, each of them. This passage I wrote to my (then 3 year old) son on what happened to be Yom Kippur 2020 left me breathless:

🔮 “Asa, we’re 6 months into the coronavirus pandemic… We just bought our first house. We are renovating and *you* are so excited, which has helped your sister a lot. She worries and has a hard time letting go of the things she loves. Your excitement and future-focus has really changed the tone of everything. The other day you looked me in the eye and grabbed my face and asked, “IS IT THE FUTURE???” I think you were asking because I said you could have something you wanted "sometime in the future." But I loved hearing such a precocious question from you. And with "time" right now being so precious, and the times we live in so fraught, it felt like a *really* good question. Is it the future? I guess it always is. It’s always the future to a time gone by. Which means it’s also always now, and also always the past - so we better make the most of it. And take care of each other, ourselves, and the planet, so we can keep having the future.” 

💡 My children are endless sources of inspiration and wisdom to me. I’ve talked a lot about my daughter’s visionary status. I’m increasingly in awe of the enthusiastic & time-bending perspective of my son.

❓Is it the future yet? When you can bend time with gusto like my son can, it always is. So please everyone, as we travel this road together, let's "future" like our kids live there.

Thank you for sharing this, Mirit. Notice please how she weaves together the personal and the professional, how she allows herself to shine through here. This is the point of saying anything online. Not to check a box — “Ok, I did the stupid thing, I posted to LinkedIn” — but to say something that matters to you. Inspired by Mirit, I wrote my own stream-of-conscious reflection on the past year. And inspired by my friend Christine Taylor, who has recently given herself permission to write whatever the fuck she wants to write, without having to fit it into a perfect little well-branded box, I published it, even though it doesn’t advance my story about telling women’s stories, except that it’s my story, so it does.

To all my dear, mission-driven, deep feeling, deep thinking, smart women, please share yourselves with us. It lifts us, it touches us, it gives us permission, and it makes us feel far less alone.

You want “impact”? That’s impact.

May you and your loved ones be safe and well -

Amanda

P.S. Here is Mirit’s LinkedIn post — if you’re so moved, I encourage you to let her know what it brought up for you, and to connect with her, because she’s freaking awesome.

P.P.S. In the comments on her post, Mirit shared this movie clip that I’ve seen before and LOVE: