The Dead Log
Over this past summer, while visiting my hometown in Minnesota, my craving for a cold lemongrass drink got the best of me. Unbeknownst to me, I had chosen to yank out my beloved lemongrass from its earthly domain mere inches from a wasp nest. Halfway through my work, I felt the sting of one of these tiny beasts, and a surge of fine American expletives sprang from my mouth. The pain was both faintly nostalgic and bittersweet. In that moment of pain and profanity, I remembered episodes of wasp and hornet stings from my childhood. And at that moment, I remembered the annual summer onslaught of hornet friends who would make their home in the not-so-visible spaces of our family pontoon at the lake. The subsequent battle to eliminate the little brutes would be vicious, ugly, and terrifying for everyone involved. The wasps attacking me that day for the insidious crime of harvesting lemongrass were building their nest within planter material that was long suffering from the effects of extreme Minnesota weather. Through decay and degradation, the location had become the perfect spot for the wasps to build their nest. Who can blame these creatures for taking advantage of what looks like something no longer valuable and attractive to our human eyes?
When plants die, microbes release enzymes to speed up the decomposition process. Hemicellulose, cellulose, and lignin – all plant cell fibers made of differing degrees of softness and toughness – are broken down by microbes and fungi whose enzymes are released to take apart the chemical bonds that have held these fibers together for their entire lifetimes. The greater the deterioration, the larger the volume of organisms that take advantage of the opportunity to feed off the rich nutrition and homes that result from the decay. Decomposition is the fundamental opportunity for living things to regenerate and regrow. Death represents the beginning of a new opportunity for nature to thrive and prosper. What is the uniquely human perspective that life and death are separate, disconnected forms - like oil submerged and instantaneously repelled by water - is a much different perspective for other life forms.
The year 2022 was, for me, the year to discover what it means to build off my own decaying former life. How to rebuild, reform, restructure, and reframe a life whose identity inalterably changed due to environmental circumstances that were both predicted and completely unexpected? Because my old identity had backed itself into the ledge of a cliff and had inevitably fallen into the waves waiting beneath, I had no choice but to adapt and swim on, changed but still moving forward and onward. Before 2022 I was still swimming, searching for the ground I needed to build a new foundation. 2022 was the year I found the ground and started to build.
The Transplant
One muggy day in Minnesota, my dad, my daughter, and I boarded the Mule - a bouncy, loud, and resilient utility vehicle - to pay a visit to the family “farm.” This farm did not nurture farm animals or crops; instead, it was a landscape of wild trees, grasses, and flowers left to fend for themselves and grow undisturbed and at the mercy of nature. Except for the occasional crush of the Mule’s aimless wanderings (led with intention by my father), the landscape was barren, thriving, wild, and unblemished. Our mission was to offer a new home to a pile of errant oak tree saplings whose unfortunate bad luck at beginning their lives on a patch of lakeside beach bound for tiling, human stomping, and toy dumping left them doomed to die a terrible and (to many a human) an unremarkable death. Their new home would not be that much better – prairie grasses nearly my height, robust weeds, and insects would unrelentingly and uncompromisingly test these saplings for years to come. Our objective that day was to provide the young trees with an open and sunny space, ample water, and nothing more. We were to do our job and leave the trees to survive and depend on generous support from nature.
But if the trees were to die - which would have been the most likely case - what then? What would be lost, and what would be gained? The loss would be perceptively that of a missed opportunity, a lost chance to grow into a giant oak tree that would survive years of relentless humidity, drought, excess rain, forceful winds, whiteout blizzards, and everything else in between. The trees would have to withstand challenges and afflictions, tests of resilience, and unimaginable hardship. All of this would happen according to the natural interplay between life and death. This is the opportunity of life: what can be gained through sheer durability, grit, and a lot of luck; a life that transforms at the behest of what the environment offers and withholds; a life that survives according to the measurement of time and is generally only appreciated by the human eye if and only if it endures the hardship that defines and shapes its existence.
The New Life
This year I learned to appreciate the control I ultimately do not have to shape the life that offers me the most meaning, value, and happiness. This may read as counterintuitive to anyone aware of the core tenets of coaching; that is, “coaching” that functions within the definition of expanding and building awareness to elevate the capacity to accomplish goals. The operative word here being awareness – not necessarily what we wish we could control, but rather what is known and cannot be controlled. Doing what is possible with the available resources and support - and acting on those goals by calculating and understanding the known elements that may dictate its likely failure or success – is part of the postmortem element of coaching that should have been built through extensive awareness-building efforts within the sessions.
Of course, only some things within the environment are readily known. Before having my daughter, I could never have understood that the shift my identity would take would inevitably push me (literally) out of the professional life I had created for myself. While juggling two strong and opposing identities, I could not exist as two separate individuals (one working with a salary and the other working longer hours without a paycheck). This push led me to my master’s study, which led me to research the topic of parental leave and the systemic incompatibility between work and life (still a highly relevant subject), which led me to seek a career path that would allow me to help others explore their own stories and challenges. In my past life, I never knew that such an exploratory and awareness-expanding tool existed. In my past life, I never knew that my assumptions could represent only a tiny part of the story I wanted to create for my life.
This brings me back to the concept of control and the stories of the stinging wasps and the oak saplings. I have done what I can with the tools that I know (and have known) that I have. I have created a life for myself in multiple countries, challenged myself professionally and personally, and failed and succeeded many times. I made the lemonade I could make, and I made it as sweet and delicious as possible. I have found the beauty in the decaying rot of my past professional life by discovering perspectives I would not have been aware of had I not been thrown into the blender of the work-life incompatibility machine. I have found beauty in transplanting myself into a new professional environment that is simultaneously hostile, difficult, graceful, and fantastic.
2022: Revitalization and Growth
This year I completed my coaching training, gained coaching hours through individual and group coaching, received my coaching accreditation, and concluded my year feeling this kind of disorienting buzz (wasp-related pun intended) about what it means to be a professional coach. Yes, coaching is a service provided to others, but it is also a tool that can be used to uncover more agency and awareness in life. I would not have taken this professional risk had I not discovered what it means to establish the principles, values, and, most importantly, the boundaries I need to thrive in my life. I would not have taken this professional risk had I not better understood what control I do have over my life and what it means to have a fruitful professional and personal life.
To digress slightly, here’s an interesting fact about wasps: during their 280-million-year-old history, they have continuously evolved to adapt and respond to the resources provided to them by their environment. The wasps who “welcomed” me into their territory by forcefully giving me the gift of several hours’ worth of seething pain are also known as yellowjacket wasps. A quick Google search for “yellowjackets” will demonstrate the underlying disdain that humans have for these ancient insects (estimated to have evolved around 65 million years ago). Entire industries (worthy of plentiful business school case studies) have developed around annihilating these critters. Yet their evolution from vegetarianism to the omnivore diet that yellowjackets enjoy today is primarily due to what their environment offered these flying delights many millions of years ago. In other words, the yellowjacket wasps’ evolution was part of a larger journey that started well before humans developed the kinds of dwellings whose crevices and cavernous spaces would provide optimal yellowjacket nest-building opportunities. What humans perceive to be annoying and even life-threatening is, in fact, a representation of the lemonade that nature has produced from the resources that have dictated its path.
Back to the scene of the wasp-sting crime, about twenty feet or so from the decaying planter boxes lie three large man-made boxes conspicuously standing proud in a field of wild plants and flowers. My parents have been raising honeybees for years now, enjoying the fruits of the hives that have lived and died in predictable cycles represented by the tilt of the Earth as it spins on its axis and orbits the Sun. These honeybees are very much the result of extensive human intervention and maintenance. Throughout the summer months, researchers from the University of Minnesota inspect the hives for invasive parasites and viruses that may destroy the hives and their leader queen. Contrast this affectionate care and attention towards the honeybee hives against the disgust and derision directed at the yellowjacket wasps. Both species are distant relatives of each other (the honeybee species having originally evolved from its ancestor wasp around 65 million years ago). Yet, one is considered a nasty pest, and the other a friend to humans. Had I been stung by one of the honeybees, I would have felt bad knowing that the sacrifice of one dedicated worker bee would have been wasteful and sad (at least to me). Yet the sting from the yellowjacket wasp – which, unlike the honeybee, does not inevitably lead to the wasp’s death – made me feel angry and blindly vengeful.
Yet it is easy to forget the role that yellowjackets play within the larger ecosystem in which they reside. By devouring other insects, yellowjacket wasps help control the untamed spread of other invasive insects. By consuming the nectar of flowers, yellowjacket wasps help to perform the critical job of flower pollination (a role which the news media would have many believe is primarily performed by the poised and steady honeybee). Who can blame the yellowjacket for their aggressive and tyrannical behavior; who can blame these insects for their incredible adaptive traits and skills in a world dominated by a much larger invasive species?
The year 2022 for me was a year of adaptation, pain (literally), success, and delight. I have taken the dilapidated frame of my previous life and reformed it into a new, more original form representing a more authentic and valuable version of myself. I did not discard these elements of my past; instead, I built a new foundation based on the core learnings and values that I now know are fundamental to who I am. With this knowledge, a more authentic self has emerged; and with this authentic self, a kind of clarity and joy that is very new and unfamiliar to me has been revealed. I look forward to 2023 with exhilaration and unease. Not unlike the yellowjacket wasp and the oak saplings building new homes and facing unknown challenges, I am building on a foundation that has been hard-fought and inspiring to create. Concluding the calendar year has afforded me the opportunity to reflect and understand what learnings have unfolded. And with any conclusion comes another story, beginning from places both familiar and strange.