Happy Sunday {{first_name|dear builder}}!
Thank you to everyone who contributed to my marathon fundraiser for Team for Kids. It means a ton! If this newsletter has been valuable for you, please consider donating (all amounts are good amounts!).
This week I wanted to share one more story from the World Beautiful Business Forum in Athens - a moment that made me tear up and will be what I remember most about this gathering years from now.
Throughout the forum there was a “youth delegation” with 50 high school students who got to participate in all the sessions. In the final act on the main stage, two of them were invited to step up to the mic and share with everyone what they were taking away from the week.
The second youth speaker, Clara-Sophie, started talking but wasn’t holding the microphone up high enough to her mouth. When an organizer walked over and nudged the microphone higher, it threw her off and she froze. She trailed off mid-sentence, tried to restart but got too flustered. You could see the panic in her face, and she turned around and abruptly left the stage.
About an hour later, right before the last speaker, she was ushered back onstage by one of the organizers. This time she was barefoot. Trembling a bit, she held up the mic and said:
"I had a panic attack in front of all of you. I’ve never felt that vulnerable. When I went backstage, the adults circled around me and told me stories about when they messed up in public and what happened next. They supported me and told me it is okay. So my takeaway from this week is that it's okay to mess up and there is always a second chance."
Immediate thunderous standing ovation. My friend next to me was crying. After three days packed with pristine polished prose about Beauty, this was the most beautiful moment of all.
That final Act was called “Beastopia” - embracing the animal spirit in all of us. The very last talk by Bayo Akomolafe drove the whole point home and made me realize the bigger significance of Clara-Sophie’s second chance.
Akomolafe’s 45-minute talk was part standup comedy and part searing indictment of modernity and somehow totally worked. His first bit was about completion:
Modernity is the paradigm of completion. Of closing the unknown. Of filling all the gaps.
In ancient Athens there were statues to all the gods, including a Statue to the Unknown God. When Paul came to town to talk about Jesus, he pointed to that statue and said "Actually it’s not unknown. I know that God."…
Christianity is the completion of religion. It fills all the gaps and does not let any unknown in…
Colonialism is the completion of the world…
Industrialization is the completion of work…
The clock is the completion of time…
Whiteness is the completion of distance. It creates and maintains distance between humans (where there really isn’t).
AI is the completion of intelligence. It is the logical end of the logical brain. It supplies confident intelligence without unknowns. It fills the gaps in our own minds.
It was a thought-provoking way to reframe modernity: we think we’re creating progress by filling Earth’s gaps with increasing knowledge and technology, but instead we are obscuring the raw jagged edges where beauty really lives.
Then he ended with this:
We’re homo sapiens - the thinking species - ‘I think therefore I am.’ But now AI thinks for us. The path of modernity seems to position us to become like machines, less ambiguity, less willing to sit with difficulty. So what can we do in this moment?
We have to refuse to be completed. We talk often “about” the world. But talking “about” something situates you outside of it. It presupposes we are outside of the world we are trying to change. It is then left to us to do stuff to the world. But we are part of that world. We are it. We can't afford to be separate.
We can’t pretend we can complete ourselves outside everything else.
They say you should end these talks with a Call to Action. A way forward. But I don’t have that. And I don’t want that.
The way is not really ‘forward’ - the way is awkward. Back and forth. Side to side. Up and down. Jagged edges and trying to understand the unspeakable.
We must know how to stay with each other as the world unravels. We don't have to figure it out. There are other intelligences here with us. We just have to actually be with each other. In and of the mess and the mud.
So tonight I have a Call to Awkward.
Ah. That’s it. That’s what makes moments like Clara-Sophie’s resonate: we see her incomplete humanness and it reminds us of our own. It affects us on an emotional level that crisp words can’t reach.
As leaders in this era of “unraveling,” embracing our own awkwardness is perhaps one of the best ways to show up.
Letting in the panic. Taking a second chance.
Letting go of the polish. Offering a first draft.
Letting up on the grind, the grit, the grimace. Slowing, laughing, embracing.
The way forward is awkward.
Astonishing Podcast Interview of the Week
Speaking of second chances, this conversation between Adam Neumann (founder of WeWork) and Rick Rubin (iconic music producer) is one of the most incredible podcasts I’ve heard in a long while.
Rick says maybe 100 words over the course of three hours, just letting Adam reflect and go deep and vulnerable on his personal growth journey through the rise and fall of WeWork. I’ve read and watched nearly everything there is to consume about WeWork so hearing Adam tell these stories publicly for the first time blew my mind - especially about his marriage and his Judaism.
I’ve come to believe that the most valuable part of entrepreneurship is the way it forces you to grow as a human. This is a powerful case study in what that looks like. It’s probably worth a Briefing writeup at some point but for now, go listen and then let’s debrief!