To Be, Rather Than To Seem

The state motto for North Carolina is Esse Quam Videri. Translated, I am told it means ‘To Be, Rather Than To Seem’. My little sister and I spent the first week of September there, prospecting immediate adventures and the potential for more there down the road in and among that fine state. Both my sister and I are approaching some cross roads as we travel down our professional and personal paths.

For me, I have leaned my ladder against a particular professional wall and have been working for ten years to reach the top, if not climb over to the other side; recently I’ve begun to realize that wall was something I built mostly in my own mind. I was working, with increasingly notable consequences, to reach to top of an idea of professional accomplishment that I had never really defined; and therefore had no idea what or where the top of that ladder was for me. Like a long distance runner whose head was down and forgot where or what the finish line looked like; I had no real goal; I felt every step but lost track of the mileage. Moreover, had begun to care less and less what that view looked like from the top rung of my self defined (perhaps inflicted.) ladder. But I was aware that whatever it looked like for me, it was becoming evident if I ever made it, it would be a lonely and perhaps sullen place to be.

I may have a growing portfolio, resume, and even now and then a good paycheck, but almost nobody I know ever feels like they are paid what they are worth and what that means is that their time is more valuable doing something else. Me and my family are getting older. My friends have their own families that lives that I increasingly am distanced from. And in my 32 years, I have never found anything that exceeds the satisfaction of time spent with the people I love and the friends who play the biggest roles in my stories and my stories are my own and my only legacy that really matters to me. I have spent most of my last several years alone and trying to cross of my list of commitments for other people – paid and unpaid – to deliver on all accounts of creative merit, professional uprightness, and personal principals, with the thought that satisfaction and returns will follow in kind. I have been fortunate to have the personal and professional relationships that I have, but am no longer satisfied with the trade offs for effort vs. rewards and have realized I need to change how I work, if not what do all together.

So with my sister with her own journey that needs to be defined, we took off together to see what we could see, and take advantage the one thing we trade for all our efforts – time. I do not know of many who have the time – or the sister – to take advantage of such a trip and was happy to know that, no matter what else, I will continue to define my means and my ends, and that I am still in a position to be able to change both, and now with a better hewn model of myself and what I want. My friend Sam Girton once asked me if I could put my story on eBay, what would it be worth? The week with my little sister under the trees in the Blue Ridge Mountains made me realize that my story would fetch a pretty penny and I leaned back along the French Broad River and recognized the fleeting satisfaction of knowing I was maximizing my time and that the bid for my time would be great, and I was happy to keep the time and leave the money to someone else.

For more on this time, watch The North Carolina Ramble, 2001.