🚶‍➡️On Potential

I've been thinking this week of potential and all that we might become.

I sat in an empty hall in the afternoon on Tuesday, relishing some quiet moments between two events that required my full-on attention. The morning's lengthy board meeting gone well, I considered what to say to a room of 160 people that night that might help them more fully grasp what it is my organization does and be motivated to contribute. Fundraising, after all, remains a core requirement of the gig.

But as is my perplexing wont, I felt the need to try and inspire beyond spurring donations themselves, instead searching for words that would help everyone in the room rise to something greater.

Why hadn't I written my remarks beforehand? I looked back at snippets I had jotted down in the weeks leading up to the event, but none of them felt adequate. Some perfunctory comments and reminders of grounding points I knew I needed to make, but nothing that felt like it actually meant something.

And so I worked to quiet my mind, performing that somewhat unnerving exercise of realizing that I could feel my breath...if I wanted to. I could find each inhalation in my belly and taste its exhale on my lips. The first steps in reorienting to mindfulness, practiced inconsistently for many years now. I struggle to find the right description even now, but it is both arresting and calming to realize that the breath is always there. These automatic and steady processes that sustain life, but that we pay scant attention to.

In and out, in and out, in and out. Don't think, don't judge thoughts that transpire. Just notice. Just pay attention. Just be.

Potential, I thought. Isn't this what it all comes down to? I found myself reconsidering my latest blog post about chapters written and unwritten, encouraging myself and others to take control of narratives instead of following along every rigid and predetermined course.

I am not new to my line of work anymore, having recently crossed the 7-year mark of my service as CEO and my 14th as a member of the organization in some capacity. And yet, perhaps because I am an odd creature ever committed to introspection, I discover new layers and frames of reference for this work on a shockingly regular basis.

What my organization does is unlock potential in those we serve, I thought, and what I needed to do at the evening's fundraiser was unlock the potential philanthropic capacity of the room. I considered this parallel, synchronistic interpretation of "potential," turning it around in my head to see if it struck the right balance of clever and authentic.

There's a line, you see, where something is too cheesy. I remember a professor referring to something I wrote in a college essay as "too cute by half," my first exposure to the phrase, and I find myself evaluating regularly if my words again meet that definition. Honestly, it's a filter I consider for every post I commit to this blog, and there are times when something seems just cute enough on first contact, but then ages poorly. The type of wine best consumed upon being uncorked instead of waiting for exposure to the chemical air.

But in that empty hall, the word potential did seem just cute enough. I tried sketching out some further ideas, but found myself staring off into the middle distance instead, blurred vision resting on a piece of art I didn't have the training to appreciate.

I knew that my first word for the evening would be potential, and that it would also be the right place to land my remarks (rule number 173 of speeches: always have an exit plan). I also knew that it could serve as a safe word, a talisman I could utter after a pause when I lost my way in the middle of whatever words were spilling out of my mouth. Something that could give just enough of a buffer for me to find my way again and reorient to the theme.

Because the thing about potential is that it's definitionally vague. It's an amorphous shape, a three-dimensional illusion that you need to screw up your eyes in order to see properly for the image to pop up from the two-dimensional paper.

Potential is inexhaustible and renewable.

Consider, dear reader, the actions you could take in this exact moment. You could, if you so chose, raise your hands above your head. You could stick out your tongue. You could swallow, and then pay attention to how odd it is that you have no idea how long it's been since you last did so. You could write or read or dance or think or play. You could work and toil. You could plan or act. You could fret or resolve. You could soar.

But until you take any particular action, it all just remains potential. A catalyst may move you forward, but until it does, it's a reserve of raw material.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what I said in my remarks. A few minutes in, I felt that I had the audience, and if I'm continuing to be honest, there are few better feelings. They look at me and wait for whatever I say next, not knowing that we're equally curious about what that will be. And I did, in fact, lose my thought some way through. I invoked my preset talisman by literally saying the word "potential," and sure enough, I came back to the path I more or less needed to stay on. Or at least I think I did—the double-edged sword of CEOship is that people are less inclined to say what they really think after you speak.

The night went on, and we met our goal. Money raised, glasses clinked.

But in my heart of hearts, when I left the building and felt the air bite around my face, my pride rested elsewhere. In my own estimation, I felt I had risen to the higher bar of helping folks depart with some contemplation of purpose and existence and what we as flawed humans are capable of.

I had, in other words, risen to some modicum of my potential.

Potentially Yours,

—Rye