Maybe I've Got No Bad Parts. Parts of me felt flawed, I was a failure. I was grieving my damaged identity, imagined future. I’d disappointed an investor, employees and customers. Sitting at the cafe, feeling completely abandoned. I was depressed. Angry at myself for making such a mess of the company I owned. But little did I know I was learning about my relationship to suffering. Lessons that would enrich me decades later. “Just let me change places with you. I’ll take your apron and your...
16 days ago • 2 min read
A Syncopated Rhythm of Joy and Pain I once believed the pain of business failures was something to conquer, not listen to. I had learned to be strong, to keep a tight tempo, and override any failure. I felt an acute tightness in my chest, and my gut roiled in discomfort in my determination to keep my life in balance and to shut out the discord of stressful days. Maybe it's the imbalance of stress and pain that feels to me like the dissonance of jazz. Peace isn't always found in perfect...
23 days ago • 2 min read
Old Men Ought to be Explorers Throughout my career, I collected skills that helped me build businesses. Last week, watching The Odyssey, I realized I've had my career with risks and rewards, but now I’m wondering what to do. After Odysseus won the battle at Troy, he travelled through numerous memorable adventures before finally reaching home twenty years later. It wasn't the battles that caused me to think about the movie’s plot, it was the ending. After surviving war, monsters and losing his...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
From Business ….. to Beginner Again In my early twenties, I entered a world that I was told would reward me for hard work, competence, and initiative. At seventy-two, I seem to be entering a world that asks me to grow beyond what I’ve learned, and step into each day as a beginner. Lately, I've been wondering what being a senior is really meant to look like. And I fondly remember the fresh feeling of being in my first bike shop in the late ‘70s. The front door was finally locked. Dennis, Tim,...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Quiet Courageous Acts That Saved Lives “It wasn’t just the Nazis,” Mieke said. “It was the people you knew. That’s what made it terrifying.” My friends, Durk and Mieke Schaap, now in their mid-90s, lived through the Second World War not as soldiers or resistance leaders, but as children in a small Dutch village. Resistors and Sympathizers “My own father was a good man; quiet and hardworking. But during the war he was doing more than I realized.” Mieke knows that in her home there were...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Durk & Mieke; “Doing What Had To Be Done” Bread Delivery Boy In 1944, Durk was only thirteen when he said goodbye to his parents and worked as an apprentice baker in the village, Echtenerbrug Netherlands.. At 4:30 AM, he stumbled out of his warm bed to gather the wood for the oven. There was no electricity, so all the mixing and kneading for 300 loaves was done by hand. The baker would sometimes tell him, “Take an extra five loaves on your bicycle to that house. They will need it this week.”...
2 months ago • 2 min read
The Pace of Friendship. Last week, two friends challenged my need to always be better, be stronger, and to ride at a fast pace. I had traded my office, emails, and writing posts for 320 kms of remote and wild cycle trails. The hardest part of the trip wasn't finding a line through another rock fall. Or fjording up the trail, when the potholes turned into ponds. The biggest test was allowing myself to be a learner of what my friends could teach me about my pace of living. Setting intentions...
3 months ago • 2 min read
What Near-Death Failed to Teach Me. I came so close to dying that day. Cycling to the Rocky Mountain office, 30kph, and suddenly I was airborne. Time compressed in those milliseconds. What hit me? I’ve got a bike show next week! Then a strange thought: This is an amazing airshow! Everything went black. I lay there, knowing nothing. Minutes later, my rattled brain started to wake. Confused, I looked up into the pale-blue morning sky, and a startled face, peering down. The big guy radiated...
3 months ago • 2 min read
“You Don’t Believe it, Grayson, Do you?” Allen has a confrontative, angry view that no one else searches as he does. “Everyone thinks it’s garbage. You don’t believe it, Grayson, do you?” My brother has become one of those weird mystical people that seem intent on trying to understand things that feel like bottomless mysteries. He’s a confusing brother to love. I’m disturbed by the dissonance of emotions I feel around Allen. I remember the potential Allen had, and yet in his present...
4 months ago • 2 min read