Bringing our whole self

You know we’re constantly told about “bringing our whole self to work” this idea that we should be free to embrace the more profound things that make us who we are within the confines of work. I get that and think it’s a great idea. But that isn’t what this blog is about; no, this blog is a eulogy. And the story of my admiration for my Uncle. He passed away last week, and I was so glad I had a chance to talk with him before he went.

It is hard to stare down death and put into words what someone means to you, provide an optimistic voice, and not have it crack when someone you love is close to the end. As I looked for the words, I came across a new thought of what he meant to me and a new understanding of “bringing our whole self” not to work but to our relationships too. If this sounds strange, perhaps a story will best articulate what I mean.

My Uncle Chuck lived in Southern California, which meant I didn’t always get to see a lot of him; he was in sales, and so when it brought him up to the Northwest or when he came and visited family, we’d get a chance to see him. I happened to be working on a project with Sony Innovation Studios at the time on a fantastic technology called volumetric capture (a similar technology has since been used in things like the Mandalorian to great effect). I was going to meet with the group and decided to head down the weekend early and spend time with my Uncle. One of the few perks of business travel is the ability to bookend something we want to do, even managed to catch the Smashing Pumpkins after they had re-formed down there that weekend.

I went to see my Uncle and he brought out a giant binder filled with mementos, pictures, and documents about his career. You see, my mom had always been talking to him about my career path and journey, something I wasn’t aware of, and I would learn we had a lot in common. Some might have their eyes glaze over as an elder statesmen/family member started swapping war stories, but I was enthralled. There were stories about rockets, addressing challenges with nuclear safety, time in the air force, how he put together GPS technologies with CAT equipment to enable use cases in construction that hadn’t been possible.

Probably my favorite story and the details were sparse (for a good reason) was how he got a call from some random person in the military and they seemed deeply dismayed over a rocket launch they might have to scrub due to a missing part. I can’t recall what job he was in at the time, but it wasn’t dealing with rockets anymore. Someone had said to this person, if anyone could get it for you, it would be Chuck. Sure enough, his network was able able to source the part. A few days later, he gets a call from the same person, and they said thank you for sourcing the part, and then they told him to look to a particular area of the sky, and there up goes the rocket whose launch he helped make happen.

Something beautiful happened on that trip, a right of passage, I suppose for me. At that point, we stopped just being Uncle and nephew, and we started seeing the whole self. There was this whole other life that somehow I had missed up until that point because we had always just snapped into the roles within the family unit.

When I last got a chance to talk to him, this was one of the areas of optimism I could share. It was something I was so happy to discuss with him. I felt like we were cut from the same cloth and that this part of our lives was so substantive. He will be greatly missed, but I’m glad I got to see his whole self because he was an amazing man.