RWL #266
un-becoming
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! It’s spring break! Woo-woot! Of course I’ll be sitting here at the LHH catching up on grading and working on some research, but I do get to relax a little. The weather looks promising this week - I think I may get out on my paddle board for the first time since Thanksgiving.
I am still following the Ukraine situation closely - this is a major historical event we are living through - and rather than include them here, I have prepared a “Ukraine” version of the newsletter (RWL #266U) that I will send out tomorrow. This newsletter will only focus on my usual stuff. Hopefully the Ukraine version of the newsletter will be of interest, but if it isn’t - well I will refund you in full for your subscription costs. ;)
So, I came across this Paul Coelho quote last week and I have been thinking about it because it reflects some of what I have been thinking about this year:
“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.” ― Paul Coelho
I enlisted in the Massachusetts National Guard in April of 1989. I did so for a number of reasons - some of them financial - but also because I really wanted to be part of something that I thought was admirable, and to go through training that I thought would improve my character. I wasn't wrong. It was financially beneficial - I have been largely financially independent since that decision - my folks still helped me with school, but I reduced their contribution by about 90% - and then I went on active duty as soon as I graduated in 1992 and never looked back. The experience of being in the Army also helped shape me and make me a better person.
Unfortunately, something I learned fairly early on was that I was not going to be a soldier’s soldier - I was not going to be a master of field craft. I just finished an interview with Major General (retired) David Rubenstein (coming out soon on my podcast) and I was struck by how the Army fit him like a glove. He completed Ranger School as a cadet, and immediately launched on a career that was rather amazing. Now to be fair, there are 250 generals in the US Army at any given time (out of 500,000 or so total soldiers), so comparing yourself to a general is a bit like comparing yourself to an Olympic athlete. If you measure your success that way, you will always feel pretty bad about yourself. What I want to say is my early career in the Army wasn't great. I'd say my performance in the early years was fair to middling most of the time. I never would have passed Ranger School - for one thing, I am terrible at land navigation. I can get lost in my living room, never mind travel miles over rough terrain in middle of the night by compass. This is a thing you need to do in order to graduate Ranger School, or become a really great field leader in the Army. I have a list of other things I wasn't all that great at. One of my other early assignments was being a practice administrator, which I was also not great at. To be fair, I was given no training, but even if I had been, I think I would have been fair to middling. I'm just not cut out to be an operator - I don't have a mind for detailed planning and monitoring of execution.
However, I did eventually stumble my way into financial management and as it turns out, I did have a lot of natural proclivities for that sort of work. I love abstraction, quantifying goals, and working on strategic initiatives. I loved it because I was good at it. Success tends to generate passion. People who are good operators tend to develop a passion for operations. (Just not me!)
The lessons I learned through the frustration of being fair to middling was what I was not good at. The Army likes generalists, so it kept offering me opportunities to do operations-focused roles, but after my first 10 years or so, I had realized operations was not a good fit for me. I wasn't meant to be an operator - lots of people are good at it - but it wasn't me. When I found a good fit, I was much happier with my career. But that meant a reality check - I was going to be limited in what I would do going forward.
I made a final evolution during my Army career and transition to teach, which I discovered is my life's calling. I'm very lucky the Army presented me with so many opportunities to experiment and explore. But even within this thing that I consider my calling, and even north of 50 years old, there are things that I do well, and things that I am fair to middling at.
So I think the journey of life is experimenting and exploring, and finding the things you are good at, or at least better at, and engaging those while letting go of the things that you are not good at, that you are not called to do or be. Life's gifts are not evenly distributed, and that is not fair, but it is fact. Accepting and dealing with reality is essential if you are going to ever make progress. I would have really liked to have been a soldier's soldier, but that is not the set of gifts that I was given. When I stopped trying to become something I was not meant to be, and let those possibilities go, I was able to focus on that which I was meant to be.
Are you pursuing something that is not the authentic you? Are you trying to become something that is not aligned with the gifts life has given you? You might reflect on letting those go. It might hurt to acknowledge that the dreams you have about who you might become are never going to become true, but if you don't let them go, you won't be able to become the thing you are meant to become.
All of the links this week follow the theme of “un-becoming”.
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Read
What: The Sociological Eye, FIVE KINDS OF FRIENDS
http://sociological-eye.blogspot.com/2022/02/five-kinds-of-friends.html?m=1
Why: Fascinating sociological analysis of "friendship" - Collins proposes 5 kinds of friends. This is longish, but you can skim it. Once you've read his categories of friendship, if you skip to the end you can see how he operationalizes his analysis (i.e., he provides indicators of what each looks like in practice). Fun!
Friends are obviously important for our development. I’ve quoted Austin Kleon here before, “You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life.” Friends (and intimates) are the most important things you let into your life. Another variation on this is, “You are an average of the five people you spend the most time with.” So thinking about un-becoming - you might want to consider who you spend time with and whether they are helping you progress toward your authentic self.
This article is longish, but it can be skimmed.
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What: Adam Grant, The surprising habits of original thinkers (16 min)
https://www.ted.com/talks/adam_grant_the_surprising_habits_of_original_thinkers
Why: Adam Grant is always clever. A couple of take-aways from this video that I would have you pay attention to:
Creative people distinguish between being a failure and having a failed idea.
Creative people try a lot of ideas on - which means they try a lot of bad ideas - but they are willing to discard the bad ideas in pursuit of good ideas. So hold each idea loosely.
Creative people build on existing ideas more than bringing new ideas from whole cloth.
The process of un-becoming requires a lot of trial and error. That was my first 10 years or so of my Army career. Trying, and maybe not failing (though, yes, sometimes), but not loving what you are doing, and trying something else. Holding on loosely to identities is especially important.
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Listen
What: Good Life Project, Amy Bloom | A “Good” Death (and why we need to talk about it)
Why: Bloom tells about her husband’s choice to end his life early after a diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s. I haven’t read her book, but I think I might. Her husband used Dignitas, a service in Austria that provides physician assisted death.
Alzheimer’s is a true un-becoming, but in a negative way. It is a disease that strips away a person’s identity and possibility. I believe choosing a dignified death is an authentic way of living.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! If you come across any interesting stories, won't you send them my way? I'd love to hear what you think of these suggestions, and I'd love to get suggestions from you. Feel free to drop me a line at mark.bonica@unh.edu , or you can tweet to me at @mbonica .
If you’re looking for a searchable archive, you can see my draft folder here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jwGLdjsb1WKtgH_2C-_3VvrYCtqLplFO?usp=sharing
Finally, if you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://markbonica.substack.com/welcome
See you next week!
Mark
Mark J. Bonica, Ph.D., MBA, MS
Associate Professor
Department of Health Management and Policy
University of New Hampshire
(603) 862-0598
mark.bonica@unh.edu
Health Leader Forge Podcast:
http://healthleaderforge.org
“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” – Pablo Picaso