THE FOG

There was a stretch of my life when everything I thought I knew about myself got challenged.

Some of it came through loss.

Some through betrayal.

Some through disappointment.

And some of it came from looking in the mirror and realizing I wasn't always the man I thought I was.

That one was harder.

For a long time, I had a pretty clear picture of myself.

I thought I was a good leader.

A good father.

A good husband.

A good friend.

I thought I understood people. I thought I understood myself.

Then life got complicated.

Relationships I believed in changed.

People I trusted disappointed me.

Some people hurt me.

I hurt people too.

Things I had built part of my identity around suddenly didn't feel very solid anymore.

And when enough of that happens at the same time, something strange happens.

You start questioning everything.

Was I actually a good leader?

Was I as present with my kids as I thought I was?

Had I really listened to my wife, or had I sometimes been so busy carrying everything that I didn't notice what she was carrying?

Had I loved people well?

Had I confused being needed with being connected?

Had I spent so much time becoming successful that I stopped paying attention to who I was becoming?

Those are uncomfortable questions.

Especially when the answers aren't always the ones you want.

That's where the fog really started for me.

Because once some of the stories I'd told myself about who I was began to fall apart, I wasn't entirely sure what was underneath them.

So I did what I had always done.

I kept moving.

Work.

Responsibilities.

Problems to solve.

People who needed me.

Decisions to make.

From the outside, life continued.

Inside, I couldn't see very far.

For a while, I wanted desperately to get out of that place.

I wanted answers.

I wanted people to understand me.

I wanted some things repaired.

I wanted some things undone.

Mostly, I wanted to feel like myself again.

But eventually I realized something uncomfortable.

I couldn't find myself while defending myself.

So I stopped trying quite so hard to prove that I had been right.

I let betrayal hurt.

I let disappointment be disappointment.

I let myself grieve things that weren't coming back.

And then I started looking at my own part of the story.

Not to punish myself.

Just to see it clearly.

I wasn't always the leader I thought I was.

I wasn't always the father I thought I was.

I wasn't always the husband I thought I was.

Sometimes I got it wrong.

Sometimes I was distracted.

Sometimes ambition took more of me than I realized.

Sometimes I carried so much that I wasn't really present for the people standing right beside me.

And strangely, admitting those things didn't destroy me.

It did the opposite.

Because underneath all the titles, expectations, mistakes, successes, failures, hurt and disappointment, I started finding someone familiar.

Me.

Not the polished version.

Not the successful version.

Not the version that needed everyone to understand his intentions.

Just me.

The kid who laughed easily.

Who was curious about everything.

Who loved people.

Who could be ridiculous for absolutely no reason.

Who felt things deeply before he understood why.

I thought I had lost him.

I hadn't.

He had just gotten buried underneath a lot of life.

And here's the part I didn't expect.

Finding him didn't mean going backward.

I don't want to be who I was.

I want to be who I am now, with him still in there.

The experience stays.

The mistakes stay.

The scars stay.

The things I've learned about being a husband, a father, a friend and a leader stay.

Even the disappointment stays.

But I don't have to carry all of it like armor.

For a long time, I thought the fog was something that happened to me.

Now I think differently.

Some things had to become difficult to see before I could see myself clearly.

I went into the fog thinking I needed to figure out where I was going.

Instead, I found the person who was going there.

I found myself.

And this time, I don't intend to lose him.