I started this outward-facing pursuit of truth in the wake of my mother’s passing. Sarah Collens Adams was a fierce interlocutor who also possessed the grace to meet people where they were.
She lived out what I seek to pass on here:
To build a world where we can both disagree with passion and have something beyond maintaining tolerance, the enjoyment of our differences.
She was the most un-offended person I have ever met. Not because she refused to entangle herself with difficult ideas but because she knew the secret to offense.
If you are offended, you are not in danger. The obstacle is the way. Everything that changed the world for good started out as something offensive.
However, the danger is real if you disallow your worldview to endure challenges. This refusal is the antithesis to progress and the cancer of diverseness. Our daily routine will not provide us the opportunity for this fundamental ingredient towards progress. It is up to us to purposefully disrupt our lives and intentionally insert an increased level of uncomfortably and yes offense.
I don’t care what you have been told your whole life.
You are allowed to take a path that is dangerous.
I was born a wild man.
Wildly I was loved and wildly I was raised. Where most were told no, I was told go. Where most were given restrictions, I was given a hatchet. Where most were held back, I was sent forth.
The foundation of my childhood propels me more strongly today.
Growing up my family called me Slammin Sam. I ran, bumped & slammed my way to countless ER trips resulting in over 70 stitches in my head and face. I had to really know what sharp meant. I needed to experience what hot meant.
My parents saw this need for risk and they set before me countless adventures. They built a trap door in my floor that led to the garage, they put up a latter to the roof for me to run around. Don’t worry, I was warned about the if you fall here, you might die side. I had a machete & hatchet “way too young.”
Work was a part of life. My sisters and I were made to work 9:00-12:00 six days a week. Every complaint added 15 minutes with no fail. But when we were free, we were free and our 20 acres in a suburb of Cleveland Ohio felt the wrath of that freedom.
Led by my mom, having a vast set of experiences was a high priority. Wherever we went I was tasked with speaking to adults, looking them in their eyes, shaking their hand, and learning three things about them. Much to my chagrin, I was forced to play cello from the age of five, something I am so grateful for as an adult. I went to an Amish school for a week. My sisters and I were enrolled in a southern school for 3 months. We also took a 3 month trip to the countryside of France near La Roche Sur Yon. There we went to a two-room schoolhouse where not even the English teacher spoke English. My mom had a craftsmen make us stilts and posted summer challenges and their perspective rewards. These noted only scratch the service of the adventures set before my sisters and me.
Their lessons could never be taught in a classroom, their challenges could never be listed on a test. And just like how the best things in life are free, the most important lessons in life are unquantifiable. The mystery of adventure isn’t a formula that you might easily reproduce it. It is a state of being that simply requires us to embrace its ever-expanding uncertainties.
I grew up hearing how it is knowledge and truth that allow people to evolve, grow and change. How you think > what you know. “It is a small world after all,” because its vast complexities do not exist apart from one another, but in connection with each other. We must gather and connect because of our vastness not in spite of it. Because the harmony within diversity is what brings unity. The importance of this broad liberal understanding was ever in my ear.
My dad is a landscape architect and ex-professional drummer who has never met a stranger. He taught me the value of seeing value in all people. I vividly recall late-night conversations with cookies and milk where he described how there would always be people around me that felt like less and people who were treated like less. He would tell me how it was up to me to go out of my way to befriend them. These words struck me in a serious way and I took this charge to heart.
This, among other things, attracted its fair share of bullies.. and after each fight, I was taught to sit down with the kid and usually my parents and their parents to discuss a way forward. There was never any notion that I was to hate the boy I fought with. Every problem had a solution. And it was up to us to find it.
This wide range of experiences mixed with a dangerous amount of freedom shaped me greatly. This risk-filled freedom built in me the understanding that it was up to me.
I am married to the most beautiful-fun-amazing wife, Brittany, who is all a man could ever dream of. She has the heart of a warrior and is the deepest of thinkers. Her depth takes me back often and is a catalyst to everything I do and all that I am. I am a lucky man.
My life mission can be found here: Mission Statement
I believe in a radical ownership where the whole world is each of ours. Not in a possessive way, but in regards to the value it deserves and responsibility it demands. All of it, it is ours. Again, not as to possess anything with a deed. But in the way where we pick up “the trash” that is not our own. In the way where we stand up for the weak, where we speak for the voiceless. This is the heart of Royalty. This is the heart within us all.
There are many incredible movements for the disenfranchised. But the true voiceless are those who have no movement, no societal favor. Their plea is not on the lips of the famous. Their cry doesn’t break the news. It is up to us to find them and be their champion. And then do it again.
We must celebrate our own internal diversities & complexities. I believe that we must be vast. We must face the fear of hypocrisy. In fact, hypocrisy is mandatory, for all noble pursuits create within them the unavoidable trap of their own specific failures due to the nature of their higher aim. We must create a new standard that can hold the tension between seemingly opposing ideas. Progress is on the other side. No one will do it for us.
It is with this wild heart that I pursue my mission. It is with this energy I work towards a more perfect union for all people.
It is with a heart tuned to risk that I dare to be vast. Through the prevailing wisdom which says to specialize with a narrow laser focus, I am here to be vast.
I am here to encourage us all to embrace our inner complexities and diverseness fully and to blast that beauty all over the world with abandon.
The world doesn’t just need more of you, it needs more of ALL of you.
Be complex. Be diverse. Be Vast.
It is up to us.
Do you have something to say? I would love to hear it. Contact me here.
