Last week’s post struck a nerve.
I wrote about my choice to believe in the promise of America, even when that belief might feel unfashionable. I wrote about how fear can shrink us, how cynicism can make cowards of us, and how hope—quiet, stubborn hope—can stretch us toward something better. Several of you reached out to say it landed at just the right time. Not because you were feeling especially hopeful, but because you weren’t.
That’s the thing about hope: it rarely shows up looking like certainty. More often, it feels like discomfort. Like holding your breath. Like standing your ground when part of you wants to walk away.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…
That sentence, one of the most famous in history, starts with something most of us skip over.
Not the truth.
Truths.
Plural.
The founding of this country didn’t rest on a single, simple idea. It rested on a tension: the belief in human dignity and equality, declared at a time when neither was fully honored or realized. It was both a claim and a contradiction. An aspiration and a failing.
Both were true.
And they still are.
That’s what I’m sitting with this week. Actually, not sitting. With any luck, while you’re reading this, I’ll be paddling somewhere in the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota with my son, totally off-grid. No phone. No signal. Just water, trees, and sky. And a ten-year-old boy who is, in his own quiet way, becoming a man.
He’s ten.
And he’s becoming an adult.
Both are true.
We’re out there to mark a moment. To celebrate four weeks of wilderness training, he’s completed—more than most adults I know could handle. To give him space to step forward while I walk beside him. Not leading. Not pushing. Just near.
I want him to know that becoming isn’t something that happens all at once. It’s something we carry forward piece by piece, day by day, decision by decision. And that the people who love you aren’t supposed to make you into anything. They’re supposed to walk with you while you become who you already are.
Of course, this is a terrible time to leave my business for a week. Opportunities are contracting. Doors are opening. It would be easy to tell myself I can’t step away right now.
And it’s also the perfect time to leave, because we’ve built something sturdy. Because the people I work with are capable and trustworthy and they don’t need me to hover for things to grow.
Both are true.
The longer I live, the more I think leadership is mostly the willingness to hold tension without flinching. The willingness to carry two truths in each hand and not drop either one just because it’s uncomfortable.
My business is fragile and it’s durable.
The people I lead are strong and they’re still learning.
I need to move fast and I need to move wisely.
In my case, the work matters deeply and my son matters more.
I used to think leadership was about making quick, decisive calls. Either/or. Clean lines. I don’t think that way anymore.
I’ve learned (mostly the hard way) that when we rush to resolve tension too quickly, we lose something essential: the capacity to live inside the stretch. To be both humble and brave. To name what’s broken and still believe it can be made whole.
That’s not just true in parenting or business. It’s true in the larger story we’re all inside.
Because the American experiment, the one I wrote about last week, isn’t built on perfection. It’s built on the relentless pursuit of something better. It was flawed at the start. It is flawed still. And yet the idea remains: we hold these truths.
We are broken and we are beautiful.
We have failed and we are still trying.
We are not there yet and we’re not done.
Both are true.
So this week I’ll be off-grid. Listening more than talking. Learning from my son. Letting the wilderness remind me how small I am and how good that can be.
And when I come back, I’ll come back to the work. Because that’s part of it too.
That’s the kind of life I’m after these days.
Not one that needs to control everything.
Not one that hinges on me.
One that tells the truth about what’s hard, and still moves toward hope.
I’ll be back next week.
A little dirtier.
A little clearer.
A little more convinced that holding two truths is the real work.
P.S. I’m sending this before the boarding door closes on my last flight out. Which brings me to one more impossible thing to reconcile: no one ever really knows if you’ll have Wi-Fi on a plane. It’s a “two truths” situation. You can sit inside one of the pinnacles of human achievement, a pressurized metal bird hurtling through the sky at 600 miles an hour, 30,000 feet off the ground, and still not be able to load your email. We’ve put men on the moon. We’ve split the atom. But you still can’t count on streaming a video between MSP and International Falls. Both are true.