A Mirror, A Clock, and An Inside Joke

I have a close friend in his mid-nineties with whom I communicate on average at least weekly. On an evening walk not too long ago, it occurred to me that almost everyone he would have ever known from childhood, from college, and from almost all of his various jobs during his career would be no more. Every doorman, receptionist, telephone operator, elevator operator, manager, CEO, janitor, all the lazy ones, all his favorites, all gone. His contemporaries would be almost 100 years old today. Peter was the mentor of one of my mentors, Ron; whose own passing several years ago catalyzed the connection between Peter and me. The price we pay for a lengthy life is the accumulation of loss, and the longer we live the more expensive it gets.

Very recently, my colleagues and I lost another highly valued and cherished colleague. He was much better known, for longer, by many more people at work than he was to me. He also lived on the other side of the world and the other side of the clock. Despite routine engagement on some level, shared meetings and a couple joint presentations, we’d met in person only once at a leadership retreat. Nevertheless, somehow I was very deeply, emotionally impacted when I learned of his passing, even to my own surprise.

Besides obvious human compassion, this stark, untelegraphed reminder of what will eventually befall us all was not all that accounted for my reaction. We have all experienced loss, and have perhaps even witnessed it with our own eyes. I certainly have. Death has affected us all up close. But this felt different. As I’ve interrogated my own thoughts and feelings on the matter, it revealed a number of things about our relationships at work that I’d never previously or properly considered. It revealed things that not only help make sense of loss, but help make sense of what we have; especially our relationships at work, the depth of their value, and our value to different people.

Our families and good friends know “everything” about us; fundamental facts, amusing anecdotes, and particular preferences about even the most mundane things. But the precise ways in which we spend the bulk of our days, they generally have no clue. In an increasingly complex global ecosystem of industries, products, and services, explaining exactly what we do and why to family and friends is often too technical, lengthy, and boring. Even if they could eventually understand, despite their best intentions towards us, they may not really care.

Additionally, we often spend more of our waking hours with colleagues than our own families, which doesn’t even include the time we spend thinking about people at work, our shared experiences, observations, current projects, and the contributions we plan and make together. This may escape our families’ conscious notice, or conversely, may be a source of consternation. Regardless, the impact of that time spent on our work relationships, the significance in making those relationships strong, and at times even the necessity of it, is probably not well understood. But we do know that this all helps make the connections at work special.

More special yet, and beyond the emotional connection, is what really bound us at the outset - our technical and professional abilities, and the critical hard and soft skills that we use to protect our organizations and their stakeholders. These gifts, well-cultivated and evergreen, are usually on display for badge-carrying members only. Unlike the greatness of public figures like athletes and musicians that may be televised live, broadcast globally, and recorded for posterity; our displays of brilliance usually happen behind closed doors, for extremely limited audiences, and may be associated with us as individuals only briefly. Our brilliance, whenever it occurs, usually happens within systems that are opaque and private by design even with prohibitions on sharing information. Ironically, these prohibitions are often most keenly honed in on family and friends. Those who are most likely to ask about our day are the ones we may be least likely to tell with any real meaning, illumination, and flourish. The details, inside jokes, technical jargon and acronyms can be discussed and appreciated only within our fraternity. The loss of colleagues is not just the loss of connections between people, but a loss of critical outlets for specifics parts of ourselves, our shared and mutually appreciated brilliance, and a loss of connections to the various internal pieces of ourselves. Our colleagues are special for who they are, for what they represent, and for what they facilitate out in the world, but also in us. The loss of a colleague introduces a gap in the fraternity, but also in us.

The loss of a colleague is unsettling for yet another key reason; it denotes a demise that is almost certainly untimely. Our working years generally cover young adulthood through middle age. In fact, the first twenty years of our careers are deemed to occur in young adulthood as middle age is defined as 45 to 65 years of age. To lose a colleague is to lose someone just when things were getting good - for them and for us. We mourn not just the loss of life and their own future enjoyment, but the loss of their potential. Such potential is arguably then totally erased, or at best remains perpetually frozen in time. Our own identities are often tightly wound in our skills and professions, and such a loss is a reminder of our own fragile potential and the uncertainty about whether it may ever be fully realized. The loss of future engagement, professional inspiration, and technical contribution is only the start of it. Our colleagues contribute socially and are also themselves social experiments, living testimonies, and advocates for issues, for themselves, and for us. What a loss. But what can be gained?

In death our colleagues can still be strong testimonies and inspirational points of reference. The fact that they are no longer here and that so much more was left on the table may amplify their words, deeds, philosophies, and impact. They can be the reminders to enjoy, support, and give thanks to one another, to support initiatives that make it better for one another, to mentor, to pull our weight, to pickup again and carry forward those still burning torches laid down by those who could carry them no farther. Perhaps these opportunities can be amplified and punctuated by each loss in a way they may not have been otherwise, since the urgency could not be more pronounced. Perhaps in the decades to come, we will be able to translate accumulated loss into accumulated gifts, both given and received. Perhaps they will no longer be deemed expensive, but valuable investments that have long since been compounding. Perhaps in the spirit of a poem by Robert Frost and a favorite of my colleague, we can recognize the promises we have to keep, and miles to go before we sleep. Perhaps those miles afford us the opportunity to emulate the best parts of our colleagues past and present, and to fully realize them in ourselves. Perhaps we are only in the early stages of understanding a “lovely, dark, and deep” process that someone else with almost a century of life could better assess. Hopefully, we are only in the early stages of our contributions, of honoring ourselves, as well as those who have come and gone before us whose lives continue to compound nonetheless.