Greatness Inside (A Visit With Mr. Nuance)

Do you leave your greatness inside? 

Like -- oops I left my rainboots inside.
And now I am hopping around puddles. 
Instead of splashing, playing and marching right through them.

Who leaves their greatness inside? 

I leave my greatness inside when I give up. 
When I focus on too much scarcity.
When I settle. 
When I let others say “good enough.” 

Is “good enough” my greatness?

What’s this? Mr. Nuance has ambled by for a visit. 
British, polished, wise, sips his tea so slowly.
As I wait for dots to connect.

He tells me: 

Good enough is great. 
And it also isn’t greatness.
It depends.

You can’t just drive one way down the same road and decide you know it. 

Drive it the other way. Even if that’s the wrong way. 

Drive it the other way
--- in the middle of the night,
of course,
so you don’t hit anyone ---
and see the road.

So familiar and so new. 

And then tell me what Truth is.

Truth is not the road. It’s in the driving. 

[This almost-a-poem-post is a lightly edited excerpt from something I wrote during a recent Write Club--where we get together online and use prompts and “automatic writing” to train our brains to write with more power and more heat. When I revisit a raw piece of writing that has “heat,” I play with it a bit more, and then I publish it. And while it’s not the standard form for a “startup leadership blog post”--I hope you find it helpful in some way.]

You can’t just drive one way down the same road
and decide you know it. 

Drive it the other way. Even if that’s the wrong way. 

Drive it the other way
--- in the middle of the night,
of course,
so you don’t hit anyone ---
and see the road.

So familiar and so new. 

And then tell me what Truth is.

Truth is not the road. It’s in the driving. 

Photo Credits: Kristin Brown and LOGAN WEAVER