I had a very interesting conversation with a client this morning. (A very generous client, by the way, who gave me permission to share this information on my blog.) This client is about sixty years old and male. He owns a professional services firm with several partners, and for two years we have been working to grow their current practice while simultaneously positioning it for more explosive future growth. My client came into this morning’s meeting joking around–a rarity. Then he said, in the presence of myself and his partners, “I’m feeling disconnected.”Coming from a man more comfortable with evasive euphemism than open emotional discourse, this comment struck me immediately.He proceeded to describe his feelings of disconnect. He said he wasn’t sure what was expected of him in the new world we were creating. He said he could no longer feel which way the business was heading, despite access to more and better information than ever before. He said that although he was supposed to be delegating more, he didn’t have confidence in the process… not because he didn’t understand it, but because he didn’t feel connected to his subordinates. He didn’t see the spark in their eyes that he was looking for. He was busier than ever, but on tactical stuff that he couldn’t relate to anything outside the moment. When pressed, he admitted that he couldn’t see a place for himself in any one of a number of potential futures. He said that after years of lamenting that the young professionals he hired didn’t understand the business of running a professional practice, he had come to the conclusion that he didn’t understand it, either.It was an incredibly honest conversation, and although none of the issues raised were new, they were conveyed with a level of emotion I hadn’t seen in him before. What really impressed me was that through his descriptions, I found myself transported to a mental place that is so familiar to me, is so important to who I am, and has been part of me for so long, that I never considered that someone’s description of a business issue could trigger it. Not everyone at the meeting this morning understood what this partner was talking about, but I did, and I have no doubt others understand it, too.A few years ago, I wrote the feeling into a short story about high school… I pulled out the story after this morning’s session and read what I had written. The feeling I’ve carried with me today feels the same as it did eighteen years ago (though the triggers have certainly changed). I called the client before posting this and thanked him–he thanked me right back. He said this morning’s meeting was great. I agreed, though he won’t know until he reads this that my motives were half selfish.Maybe you know the feeling I’m talking about. Maybe you’re already there from the description above. If not, below is how I wrote it into the story:

        [It’s Friday night and my girlfriend] has come by to pick me up. We’re in fairly good spirits despite a downer few days. It’s been one of those weeks that gnaws at you even though nothing particularly bad has happened. Some weeks are like that, you just can’t get out of your own way. This was one of them. Sometimes it’s best not to fight it. You say to yourself, “Alright, today nothing’s going to go right, and that’s all there is to it,” and you stay away from sharp objects is all. And dangerous intersections, too, if you can help it. Other times, when it’s real bad, you go straight back to bed and call it a day irrespective of what time it is.        Yesterday wasn’t so bad. Wednesday I was starting to come out of it, but then yesterday I could feel the angst coming back a little. I tried to relax, and eventually I hit this weird balance that every once in awhile I can achieve. Usually it happens in the fall; I think I need that particular smell of the leaves and gray sky to help me to get there. It happens on Homecoming kinds of days: threatening rain, breeze with a bite, maybe a little drizzle and the tops of some trees blowing around, but nothing that sends you running indoors. It makes for a rather perfect fall day, overwhelmed yet at peace, inconsolably comfortable. At peace with the beauty of all those dying leaves, without need to resolve the paradox of finding beauty in death.        It is a melancholy feeling, but not one that wretches your insides like homesickness does. This one only chills your fingers and joints enough to make the world seem distant, a trifle unfamiliar. Like you’ve forgotten something—no, no—not that you’ve forgotten something, but maybe that someone has forgotten you. There’s a gentle numbness, a slight longing, and the sense that you need to get pulled out of the feeling from the outside, that it’s impenetrable from where you stand. But you’re still warm on the inside, tea and stew and hot chocolate still feel great. I never fail to get a little introspective when it comes on; with the distance, the world’s familiarity fades and leaves me free to roam within my mind. Besides, until someone “out there” decides to come over and draw me out, I’m stuck, so what else can I do but wrap myself up in memories as if they were blankets and stay warm as best as possible? It is on these days that I can appreciate 10,000 Maniacs’ song “Like the Weather.” Yesterday, after struggling with my love life for weeks, still no solution in sight, I thought it might be a good day to step back and try to put the current struggles into the broader perspective of my life. Might as well; I was feeling disconnected from everything else and no one was coming to get me.        It became my own private holiday. I relived much of my life, humbly reviewing the lessons I had learned so far, reliving childhood hijinx, trying not to torment myself over my many failures, renewing vows to avoid ever making my most egregious mistakes ever again, and always, always, searching for experiences that I could use to work through my current situation. Annoyingly, I was frequently pulled back into reality by the left sleeve of my shirt, a gray-with-black-stripes rugby that had long ago lost the elasticity in the left wrist cuff. After a couple of years of being worn with the sleeves pulled up to my elbows, the left arm would not now stay in place for more than a few minutes at a time before falling down. I thought the one-arm-up-and-one-arm-down thing made me look like a heroin addict, and that just wasn’t my look. Note to self: don’t wear this shirt on deep thought days.        My whole life in review, visceral and vicarious at the same time. I could close my eyes and watch myself growing up… relive any moment at will, exultant or embarrassing, and feel the emotion of those moments as powerfully as I had originally—or more so, since hindsight brought its own set of feelings, sometimes comfort for the pain, or longing for the happiness, but more often than not, a cringing mortification for the pain, and relief for the happiness. These new emotions rode on top of the memories, adding to them rather than dulling them…        I floated through classes unaware of my surroundings except for my problematic sleeve and the grayness outside, completely lost in my own thoughts. If I had been called on, I didn’t answer. If I had been given any homework assignments, I didn’t know it. It always seemed to be gray on homecoming, or leading up to homecoming, and I wondered briefly if it was homecoming because it seemed to me that it was gray out. I didn’t think so; hadn’t that happened already? Besides, I couldn’t remember seeing any banners in the halls. Actually, I couldn’t remember seeing anything in the halls. Was anyone else even at school today?        I remember thinking distinctly at that point that I needed to be careful: if I ever tried to describe what I was feeling today to the wrong person, I could wind up on meds. The thought made me angry. I knew kids who were on drugs in order to keep them from having days like this, and I got angry on their behalf. From a distance, from behind my scrim, I started to feel an impotent longing to help them. So much beauty and genius that had been rendered from individuals’ angst and anguish started to appear before me. Van Gogh, Poe, Thoreau, Michelangelo… these were not happy people… Maybe it seems unfair that one person must bear so much pain, but sometimes that’s what it takes to be able to earn the clarity and perspective to see The Night Sky, or David, in a tabula rasa. What about that guy, the one who wears that white Kmart t-shirt with a red frayed flannel every day? He lost his mom, his life sucks, and yet when he played at the Battle of the Bands, didn’t we all stand and stare in awe? Didn’t he blow everyone away? Didn’t the next band, when they got up, start their set by saying, “I guess we’re just playing for fun now. Because we’re voting for him,” before pointing right at him and calling him over to take a bow in front of everybody? And where do you think that passion came from, if not from his challenges?        And so on it went.

I have never found a solution to this feeling. I have never wanted to. It’s not a feeling that begs to be solved; and though somewhat sad, I have found that it is a precursor to tremendous personal growth.I’m looking forward to my drive home.

Posted under Coaching & Consulting, Personal