After many years, I am grateful for the gift of an ordinary week with my son back home. I say ordinary because we didn’t do anything particularly different, and yet it felt anything but ordinary. It felt like I was whole and complete, and together we would find our way forward in the world. Sitting at the dining table after breakfast, building a Lego model of an Apollo space rocket together was a perfect patch of purple in our time together.
Maybe that is what life is all about. Moments of wholesomeness punctuating periods where nothing seems to make sense. This feeling of belonging together is not just about family. It extends to friends and colleagues. It is at the heart of brand building and community building. It’s how we include or exclude others that builds a moat or a barrier (depending on which side of the circle you are – in or out). The purple patches of my life have been when I am with “my people”. The shared moments of togetherness are powerful.
And yet as I reflect, it’s not just about the “we”. It’s equally about the “me” that I bring to the “we”. A poem I chanced upon, “Warning” by Jenny Joseph, had this beautiful line: “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple…”
It talks about allowing the real me to emerge and shine through. The permission to wear purple is something we tend to kick down the road to a promised tomorrow, “when this happens, then I will…”. Waiting to start living, rather than doing so in the present moment. Or to put it another way, not embracing my true or authentic self (who may want to wear purple) because it’s not approved of or appropriate.
The poem ends with this beautiful passage.
“But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.”
A reminder that I don’t need to wait to “be me”. I can start right now, wherever I am, with whoever I am. I can wear a bit of purple at any age.
The dance between the man he (my son) has become and the boy he will always be to us is best summed up with the middle seat story. Deepa wants the aisle when we fly; my son and I love the window seat. For the longest time, I was squeezed into the middle when three of us flew together. Last week, my son gave me the window and squeezed himself into the middle. The man showed up. I hope his visit home gave him the time to be the little boy again as well. And between those two modes, my hope is that we created the space for some shades of his special colour (purple or otherwise) to shine through.
The world of business is no different. There are good quarters (purple patches) and not so great ones. In the long term, the companies that thrive are those that are truly committed to an idea and aligned with their values. They can wear their colours with confidence and don’t get swayed by short term trends. Over time, their true colours shine through.
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