I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions, I recall
I really don’t know life at all

Judy Collins

_______

Around 3:00 in the morning, I was giving my five-day old granddaughter a bottle and marveling at how tiny and perfect she is. I especially looked at her little ear that is so perfectly shaped, and for some reason (sleep deprivation maybe), the last verse of Judy Collins’ song, Both Sides Now, came to my mind and I sang it in my head.

I liked this song in my twenties and thought I understood the lyrics, but the older I’ve gotten. the truer the lyrics have become. I really don’t know life at all. In the leadership work I do, I often make the distinction between “doing” and “being.” Most of us spend the bulk of our lives focused on “doing” things. Going to school, learning a profession, building a family, acquiring skills and things. We are rewarded for doing. In fact, many of us take great pride in how much doing we can accomplish.

Very few of us spend time on “being,” on discovering who we are, who do we want to be, and how we want to show up. A saying I use a lot in my program is, “Leadership is as much about who you are as what you do.” Many of us get to mid-life and realize all that “doing” we’ve done is one of life’s illusions. We may have all the items we’ve been told make up a successful life: profession, family, status, wealth and yet our lives seem small, incomplete.

Sometimes we respond by doubling down, going for the next promotion, that bigger house, the newer spouse thinking it’s not the illusion that’s wrong, we just haven’t tried hard enough. I’ve spent the last several years, personally and professionally, trying to dispel my life’s illusions and get to know, at least a bit, life more completely. I do know that the perfect little granddaughter in my arms is part of life itself.