Good morning Reader,
A few months ago, my friend John in Athens was telling me about a book on Michelangelo he wanted to translate. He was reading, connecting ideas, and finding things he wanted to explore, and I loved how it pulled him in. I wanted to understand that pull. What was it about Michelangelo, about the Renaissance, that had him so excited?
A Perfect Threshold
So I asked him why the Renaissance was such an important moment in human history.
“It’s the perfect threshold,” he said.
As John explained what he meant, he described an old world, the Middle Ages, with established ways of understanding life and our place in it. Then he described a new world that would eventually develop its own ways. What he loved was what happened in between these two worlds, while so much was being questioned and explored and hadn’t yet settled into what would come next.
As he explained it all, I started personalizing this moment in history to our individual lives today. Am I in the midst of my own Renaissance? That was the question I could feel running through me as John continued his history lesson.
In the Renaissance John described, people questioned old rules and established new ways of living. There was uncertainty. Life itself was being figured out all over again. Creativity was coming alive in a new way through architecture, sculpture, painting, and philosophy, as people explored their place in a changed world.
And then after a moment’s pause, John defined the Renaissance for me as a “beautiful voyage.”
What a tremendous metaphor this has become for me. A beautiful voyage.
After years of long-standing routines, expectations, and knowing what comes next, I might now be experiencing a Renaissance of my own. I’m beginning to wonder what it would mean to move through this period of my life as a beautiful voyage, even while I’m uncertain about where it’s taking me.
A Canvas To Create A Body Of Work
As you likely know, from 2021 through 2024, I was all in, crossing this country to champion the noble calling of distribution through the We Supply America tour, meeting the people who keep this country supplied and telling their stories. Those 32 documentary films were my Sistine Chapel.
It’s wild because I started without a business plan, without a revenue model. I just felt this calling to go, and I went. And that’s what’s cool about these periods of our careers. We develop a body of work that we’re deeply proud of. I felt privileged to bring these stories forward, and the conversations, the interactions, the filmmaking, all of it brought out an energy and creativity in me. My daily LinkedIn posts, where I shared those stories, took on an energy of their own.
In hindsight, I realize my creativity had a canvas then. I had a place to paint, if you will, to tell the stories that inspired me and many others across the industry. I really did love the work. Then this project, which had consumed my days, my years, so much of my life, ran its natural course. Even though I could see the conclusion coming, the end came with a thud.
And with that thud came many, many questions.
I knew the past accomplishments were real, but now, so were the questioning and self-doubt. The urge to create hadn’t gone away. The canvas that had provided structure, that had needed me and my creativity, hadn’t just moved. In an instant, it felt gone. The next canvas, the one I now yearned for, was still unboxed.
I had thoughts and interests, things stirring in me, but I couldn’t pull them out in a way that was ready to share. For someone who had found so much fulfillment in doing that day after day, I’ve got to tell you, that hurt. And if you promise not to tell anyone, it was frightening as hell.
There came days and nights when I’d find myself wondering: Would I find that next project, that next initiative, that next canvas? In the days, weeks, and years ahead, would I be able to expand and contribute that way again?
Then On The Way To Moab
While those questions were rattling in me 24/7, I had the opportunity to spend some time with my nephew, Marc. I picked him up in my RV in Denver, and we drove across the Rockies to Moab, Utah, where I had the chance to support him as he attempted the Moab 240, a grueling, multi-day, 240-mile race.
As we drove through those mountains, along the canyons and the rivers that cut through the earth, we talked about life, marriage, work, philosophy, and the race that brought us together. He mentioned something he liked to do when he visited a city: find used bookstores and spend time in them, looking for that rare book, some hidden wisdom waiting on a shelf.
Why hadn’t I thought of that until now? Well, when I was traveling and drinking double IPAs, I wasn’t arriving in a new town looking for used bookstores. I was looking for craft breweries where I could spend an afternoon into the evening, sometimes too many hours.
Since that trip to Moab, I’ve begun looking for used bookstores instead, and it’s something I love to do. I can spend hours in the philosophy sections of these often off-the-beaten-path stores, discovering volumes that draw me into questions about being human. Questions people have been struggling with for thousands of years. And it blows my mind that we’re still wrestling with those same questions.
As I read these time-worn pages, I recognize those same questions in my own life, in the stories of people I’ve met, and in the seventy-eight (to date) Monday philosophy calls with John. How do we live? What do we believe? How do we find our way through these thresholds, and how do we find ourselves in a complex, constantly changing world?
Our Own Renaissance
That exploration brings me back to the Renaissance John described. These books touch my soul. They spark a desire for wisdom and understanding, a desire to remain young and vibrant and creative. I want to learn. I want to contribute. I want to understand more of this extraordinary experience of being alive. There’s something in picking up a book, reading a passage, and filling its margins with my own questions and thoughts that makes me want to keep going.
Did I know where all of this was taking me? No. I could feel something beginning, a yearning, but I couldn’t have laid it out for you. I wanted to be able to answer “What’s next?” I wanted that next canvas. And yet here I was, spending hours with books, and journals, and questions that kept opening up more books and more questions.
I kept having the conversations with John. I kept filling my journals and the margins of those books. I struggled with the next paragraph of the book I’m writing, and some days I still couldn’t pull together something I was prepared to publish. That was uncomfortable. But I was also feeling this desire to learn, to create, to contribute. With each conversation, each page, each note, I gave that desire attention and began understanding more of what was pulling at me.
What has surfaced through all of this is the realization that there is a hell of a lot of life left in me.
When I think about John’s “perfect threshold” now, that’s where I find myself. Something meaningful had ended, and I was already participating in what might come next, even though I couldn’t yet tell you what it was. I think that’s part of what I’m learning to appreciate about this period of my life. I can be uncertain and curious at the same time. I can miss the work I loved and find myself pulled into something I want to explore. This voyage has room for all of that.
As one executive told me on a call last week, “If you hand off the torch, what are you going to fill your hand with?”
I don’t know what it will be for you. I do wonder what’s already drawing you toward it. Marc mentioned used bookstores in a conversation on the way to Moab. I couldn’t have told him then how much of my life would come to be occupied by the questions I found inside them. I just wanted to go in. And I kept finding things that made me want to stay, to read another page, to write something in the margin.
That question I felt as John talked about the Renaissance is still with me: Am I in the midst of my own Renaissance? I’m beginning to believe I am, even with things still to be figured out. And I wonder, as you look at what’s changing in your life and what’s beginning to pull at you, whether you might be in the midst of yours.
Dirk