I heard someone say once that hindsight is 20/20. At the time you make many decisions, you have no idea where it will lead. When many people describe an incredible journey in their life, they may say that it started with a small yet fateful decision.
As I made the decision to commit myself to writing this blog twice a week last year, I had no idea where it would lead. It was part of the principal that I was trying to live my life by, where I had to commit to effort and see where it takes me. Rather than blaming the world around me for my position, I resolved to get out of my comfort zone and take life on. I had made this decision based on the fact that I felt I had become complacent at my old job. I had been laid off in 2017 after 9 years at the company and vowed to start to take control of what I can in my life, rather than feel I am at the mercy of circumstances beyond my control.
This commitment wasn’t just with writing. This was also in every facet of my life. It meant expressing myself more with friends and family, standing up for myself at work, no matter the consequences, and doing things I wouldn’t have normally done before. One of those things was joining the board of a charity that a friend of mine was sitting on. I have never been a very charitable person or involved in altruistic causes. My philosophical basis for this was that I just didn’t see large bureaucratic entities really making a solid difference in people’s lives. I believed that better government policy and more empathy from voters could solve more of the problems than just throwing money at issues via parties and fundraisers. It’s quite a cynical take on charity I know, which is why I decided to do something I wouldn’t have done previously and join the board of a charity when offered the opportunity.
Baby Steps
I was able to begin with some minor contributions, to offer some guidance to the board as a financial expert. This particular charity was in flux when I joined. The founder and head had passed away about a year before I joined and it was being headed by an interim executive director while the board searched for a permanent one. The board and myself included, picked a permanent executive director who quickly set to coordinating events for the charity to bring artists, donors and employees together (the charity is an arts charity based in New York). At one of these events I met an employee that told me the inspiring story of the founder, let’s call him John, and how he had resolved to change his life and the world around him in the last 5 years of his life.
John’s Journey
John had started this charity out of college to share his love of theater arts with young people. He branched out into different forms of art as he added donors and a small staff of 5. For about 30 years this was how he operated. A small budget, a small staff and working in a few locations, doing what he enjoyed.
One day though, John changed his outlook. He decided that he was going to change what he was doing and grow the charity much larger. I don’t know if it was his cancer diagnosis that had anything to do with this at the time,but it wouldn’t be abnormal for a shock like that to radically shift someone’s perspective and routine. He devised a strategy and began to implement a five year plan to transform his charity and touch as many lives as he could.
Long story short, he grew the size of the charity exponentially. 5 years after he decided to change, he had over 100 employees and was operating in hundreds of locations, with a budget of millions of dollars annually. I was brought in to advise him when he needed a line of credit to manage his payroll. This is how I made contact with the charity and was brought in later after John passed away.
Change
It’s hard enough to try something new, it’s even harder to try something new when you have been doing it for 30 years. That kind of change takes courage and resolve. John’s journey and his vision before he passed, ended up changing hundreds of not thousands of people’s lives, if only each in a small way, he still made his impact felt on the world.
I enjoyed helping oversee decisions at the charity but didn’t really think that my decision to join was a dramatic change for me. However, to remain tru to my new approach to life, I was willing to see where it went. Little did I know that decision to join the charity would be a fateful move that would lead to one of the most consequential events of my life.
Blindsided
I always assumed that my youth was pretty typical. A middle class family, not rich but not wanting. I had committed, loving parents and a sister. Although we were never close, care was expressed through actions, making sacrifices for each other. Little did I know my typical upbringing was about to be turned upside down.
When a stranger reached out to me on LinkedIn last week claiming to be my a family member, I was skeptical. He claimed he had uploaded his DNA to 23andMe and found that he was related to a distant family member of mine. That family member had built a detailed family tree which included my parents. He mentioned my parents birth dates and marriage date and mentioned my uncles name. If I would only upload my DNA he could prove we were family.
Nice try I said, that information can be found publicly. You’re not going to have me upload my DNA for some sort of identity theft. I left the message alone for a day or so but one piece of information he gave wasn’t very public. He claimed a family member had lived oversees at some point and had a child. That child was him and he had been given up for adoption. He was adopted by a European family and grew up there. He had a good upbringing, received an education and had a pretty ideal life, but he wanted to connect with his biological family.
He had reached out to me because I was also listed on the family tree and when he Googled my name, my profile from the charity’s website popped up with my picture and name. I have a short bio on the website that describes my career and where I’m from. Once he saw the city I was from, he knew it had to be the same person from the family tree list.
The family member that he claimed was overseas was my mother and he claimed to be my brother. Faced with the detailed evidence, I confronted my mother and she confirmed, that yes, she had a child overseas and never told us. For 37 years I had a brother I never knew about.
Putting it in Perspective
As I mentioned in the beginning, hindsight is 20/20. If John had never decided to change his approach to his charity, I may have never joined the board. If I didn’t get laid off, I may not have joined that board and had my bio published online for my brother to find. My brother confirmed that this was the key piece of evidence that he used to reach out to me.
The point of this is that each of us, changing our thoughts, having a positive mindset and believing in our own ability to change the world around us can really change things in ways beyond what we can even imagine is possible. Changes for those of you reading this may start small, but the courage and the discipline to stay committed to doing something you believe in can literally change the world. I’m taking that same attitude for my situation with my new brother. Rather than lamenting the time missed out together, I am celebrating the discovery and the fact that the will to change has surprised me with a gift that I could have never seen coming. I hope people can use the example of both John and I as an example to push themselves to face their own fears and ask themselves why they don’t want to leave their comfort zone. Leaving that zone and getting uncomfortable could reward you in ways you don’t even know right now, so take the leap and let it go.
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