Seeing Beyond the Masterpiece

Originally published on Medium on 11/25/2021

“I can’t let go of my baby. I started this all by myself,” she said.

“I’ve tripled my revenue in one of the hardest years of my life,” she said.

“I have so much, and I shouldn’t need more,” she said.

I work with a lot of clients who choose to center their lives on human or social transformation. I see the push and pull of their values all the time. My clients have a lot of impact; it’s humbling for me to witness — driving diversity & equity in the workplace; publicly sharing vulnerability to help others connect with their own; researching, creating, and testing lifesaving drugs, helping active people rejuvenate or repair broken bodies or creating economic opportunity for underserved minorities. But there is always a little layer of guilt when they express a yearning for something else — more balance, more connection, more money, more recognition, more fulfillment. The list goes on. All aspirations are valid…and I always ask “what do you want?” Often, the answer is, “I don’t know.”

As of 2018, Sistine Chapel hosts at least 6 million people per year (pre-Covid). Twenty-five thousand people each day stroll through the Chapel gaze at the frescos painted by Michelangelo. For many tourists, the pilgrimage is a trip of a lifetime: to see a work of art that encapsulates wraps one man’s gift and talent to create a masterpiece at the intersection of power, religion, and politics. It is enormous, daunting, inspiring. So, they walk through, observe the work — maybe lie on the floor for a bit for some quiet contemplation. Eventually, they are ushered out and find their way out and on to the next thing onto, what is surely, a packed itinerary. The experience is over, save for some memories and perhaps a postcard. That once in a lifetime experience is over in about 15 minutes. I often wonder if it lives up to their expectations.

“I should be grateful,” she said.

“I want something else,” she said.

So many of us work toward some penultimate achievement, be it professional ascension or a safe, stable happy home life. And when we reach it, something emerges from the dark underbelly that says, “is that all there is?”. But we won’t say that because, well, it would seem ungrateful.

THE CONFESSION:

When I first started consulting, I marveled at how much companies were willing to pay to basically “rent” my brain. Aside from the dollars they spent on my team or me, my validation was every client who hired us again and again, some keeping us around for 6–8 years or more. Crazy. At the pinnacle, I was quoting monthly fees that exceeded not just the annual base salary of my first job after college but, more than the base salary I earned in my first year after business school. I was able to provide for my family, provide for college and shop without needing to look at a price tag. But it came to a screeching halt when my husband and I looked at each other one night and I said, “We have the American dream. Why doesn’t it feel like it?” He simply said, “Not our dream.” And so it began.

Later, a myriad of circumstances forced my hand, and I left my company to start anew. A lot of time, energy, and money spent on coaches and advisors to answer what is now a regular question of mine: What do you want?

When I was around 23, I met an older woman who told me she felt my generation had squandered all the sweat equity and progress they had fought for with the Women’s Movement. I was stunned and speechless. Clearly, she and I had different definition of the women’s liberation movement. And I set to prove her wrong:

I wanted women to have choices, whether they were the primary caregiver or the primary breadwinner or anything in between. I wanted to create opportunity for women to create careers that fit the multi-dimensional existence of what it means to be a working parent. I looked across a career of 25 years and found repeating threads throughout. I advanced my purpose passively in my corporate and consulting career; but now I wanted to center on it.

To find it, it meant taking some chances that I didn’t know existed. It meant redefining success in a realm where I had no network, no track record and no obvious income. I know I’m good at my job. More importantly, I love it: the work, the place it has in my life and the people in and outside my practice who challenge me every day to look at the world a little differently. Nothing means more that to hear that a woman realizes she can create her own career that isn’t tied to someone else’s job title and description. And when she says out loud, “I am my own category,” the first battle is won.

THE LESSON:

I AM grateful. For my clients with whom I have the privilege of exploring what’s possible, in spaces where I never dream. For my family, biological and logical, who remind me that there is no one road to happiness. For my partner in life, who reminds me that our dream doesn’t need be like anyone else’s. And sometimes, I want something different. They are not mutually exclusive.

You can be grateful AND want something different. You might have to dream bigger. Which might require you to fail bigger too. What could it be if you ripped aside the confines of the current masterpiece and see what else there is. The possibilities could be endless.

Ironically, the original Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted by Pier Matteo d’Amelia, was a starry sky on a background of blue. So maybe the original instinct was the right one after all.