Hello World!
Yes, I’m cribbing from the most universal website text there is. Here’s the thing. It fits. I’m introducing myself to you and the wider world in service of this coaching journey. So… hello there!
Jumping In With Both Feet.
I remember with such clarity one of the most important inflection points in my life. It happened when I was first moving into coaching and I learned about the distinction between our roles in life and our function in life. Here’s an example. Harrison Ford has inhabited several roles in his life. Han Solo. Indiana Jones. Jack Ryan. More roles than I could list here. However, his function is to be an actor.
I began applying this distinction to myself. It was the first step towards moving out of a role-based mentality. I began focusing less on the roles I have played – television reporter, documentary filmmaker, business owner, and so many other professional and personal hats I’ve worn in this life, and began focusing more on a function that felt more true to my nature.
Curious.
One word, and it felt so right when I landed on it, because my truth was it had been living within me all along in so much of what I now realize was just living with different roles instead of one overriding function. Another word that we may use to describe function is purpose. Whatever we choose to call it, the resonance was so powerful that I was a little stunned it took me so long to recognize it. My life hasn’t been the same since.
Living With Purpose and Possibility
How can this one reflection be so powerful? How can it possibly be of service in so many ways? It isn’t easy, hueing to a North Star, but here’s a story that I feel makes the point.
Blindsided? Kinda Sorta
In 2019, after a long journey with sight loss, I became totally blind. This is a truth about my lived experience, but the struggle for me, as it often is for so many people in the disability space or in marginalized communities, is has a lot to do with it not being the only defining characteristic I carry. It matters, yes. It is also a role, one of many roles I move in and out of inhabiting. This one is more of a permanent inhabitance, yes, but that does not take away from the fact it’s a role.
How do I, in speaking with you about who I am, move into exploring blindness through my function as a curious person? When I learn to use a cane to maneuver as confidently as I can manage, I’m moving through curiosity about my environment. When I trace the edge that divides the softer sand from the hardpack alongside the waterline at Ocean Beach during a run, I’m curious about the sensations I’m feeling, hearing and smelling, and how this curiosity affects my capabilities and my capacity. When I have traveled the world as a blind filmmaker, telling the stories of other blind men, women and children who change perceptions, raise expectations and make a difference, my curiosity cup is all but overflowing, and I feel gratitude for where that curiosity has taken me.
Moving Through Curiosity
May I offer some examples of how curiosity has helped me view events and challenges I encounter as happening for me instead of to me? I’m going to assume you said yes. Thank you !
Here’s a segment from that documentary series. I wasn’t totally blind yet, as I am today, and I was literally feeling my way through my curiosity about this new world with its unfamiliar and very frightening prospects.
This TED Talk I did a few years ago was another opportunity for curiosity. What, I wondered, would it be like to talk about my world as a visually impaired filmmaker to an audience who had never experienced that world?
An Intent and an Invitation
My intent is not to turn this page into a video gallery for my ego. Rather, I invite you into this conversation about moving from inhabiting roles to living in function. Truth in advertising, I don’t succeed every day. I can’t cop to that kind of hubris. Nor, I wager, do you. What I can say is that I’m a work in progress, and I’m doing my best to do the work. Perhaps you are too, and that’s why you’re here. Let’s celebrate that, and let’s see what comes next in your own self-discovery.
Onwards!