Happy Father’s Day 2024!
My dad enjoying the sunshine
The what was crystal clear.
The how was no where in sight.
Casey Neistat ( / caseyneistat ) is the OG of KZread, vlogging and social media creation. He’s associated with New York, but it wasn’t always so. Casey set his sights on NYC knowing he wanted to make it there. Without any idea or plan on how to do it. But he’d grown up hanging on by a thread so he was comfortable.
Casey had two qualities that drove him, gratitude and optimism. A little boy with absentee parents. No restraints. No security. Hanging on by a thread.
One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.
The desperation and despair drove him. Created him. Forged him.
Watching Casey for years and knowing his story got me thinking about mastering the hang. The hanging by a thread. Handling risk and failure. Hanging on. Even by a thread because even a thread provides suspension above failure. And despair. In the thread we find hope. Enough hope to continue.
Patience vs. impatience.
A willingness to hang on by that thread for however long it’ll take.
Casey describes his early life as a life without any plan B. He was working 60 hours a week making $7.25 an hour working in a restaurant kitchen. What was he going to do? Move back to southeastern Connecticut where he’d grown up in despair? Optimism drove him to declare - both to himself and others - “I’ll figure it out.”
Said Casey: “I was running from a pack of wolves. I knew if I slowed down or stopped, I’d be eaten.”
Thinking of Casey’s story and how he described the early part of his journey to find success, I began thinking for the umpteenth time about how life circumstances impact us. It’s remarkable how for some it becomes crippling baggage providing a million excuses. For others, like Casey, it’s the catalyst that drives them to rise above all the tragedy and despair. That old meme remains true. Hot water makes the egg hard, but it softens the potato. I suppose it’s the hot water that shows us what we truly are, but I’m still puzzled about the choices we make - and I do believe we choose what we become, unlike the egg or potato.
When working with a group in my coaching practice I often deploy a number of strategies to create closer bonds. Trust, vulnerability, safety - these are all critical when we’re trying to develop high-performing teams (or groups). Seeing each other as something other than a position or title serves all of us well. At work we rarely are able to show our full humanity, which is a shame because that’s where our deepest connections are made.
It’s interesting to watch it happen. A group of people enter a room. They know each other. They have some context for one another. But many of them don’t really know each other very well. Over an hour, or two, they begin to see other differently. They understand the past pain, suffering and struggle. We can all relate. Our story specifics may differ, but at a macro level - we’re mostly similar.
It’s apparent that we all had many opportunities to decide, will we be an egg or a potato? Will the circumstances of our life - especially the ones we had little control over - harden us or soften us? And will that hardness manifest itself in a resolve to rise above it or will it be a hardness that drives us deeper into excuse-making, and blaming? Will it soften us in ways that cripple us and rob us of the confidence and resolve needed to succeed? Or will it soften us so we can be more compassionate and grow into better humans?
Choice. Making up our mind.
Will we hang by the thread with optimism? “Hey, look…I’m still hanging on!” versus “Oh, man. I’m just a thread away from falling.”
Hanging on by a thread is still hanging on. Just like “by the skin of your teeth” is still getting by.
Sure, the margin is thin but it’s a bit binary - you’re either hanging on or not. Whether it’s by a thread or a strand of threads.
It’s congruent with the theme of last week’s episode (leaningtowardwisdom.com/youve...) . There’s pressure on the situation. Maybe it’s do or die. Maybe not. But in this moment we feel the urgency, importance and seriousness of the situation. Or maybe we think we know.
Time.
Capability.
Innate talent.
Skill.
Experience.
Opportunity.
Challenge.
What’s the goal of hanging…whether by a thread or a strand? Is the object to continue to hang or is there something else?
I’ve never wanted to just hang indefinitely. As kids we had monkey bars. The goal was to move from one end of the contraption to the other by way of a dozen or so bars from which you had to hang. The point was to swing from one bar to the next until you completed it…all without letting go. Hanging was the conveyance to get from one end to the other.
For me, hanging has a purpose. Maybe it’s waiting for what’s next. Maybe it’s moving toward what’s next. But hanging is a mome...