Castaway

Have you ever felt like you are alone on an island? Some people physically create their lives that way. Some people create emotional barriers resulting in being alone. And sometimes things happen in life that leaves you alone temporarily physically and emotionally.
This past week I pulled notes out from a team building meeting that I had organized for my team almost 10 years ago. A third party came in to facilitate. The first exercise he conducted was about a visualization technique in which we imagined being left on a tropical island. There were roles on the island and we had to discuss who was going to do what and why. The last thing was finding a raft that would allow one person to get back. We had to each write down who would be the one and why. And then we had to write why we did not pick each of the others. Then of course share it with the group. There were 7 of us and you could not vote yourself as the one for the raft adventure. So who was chosen the lucky one to go back on the raft? Yep it was me. So how did that make me feel? Ironically I had just seen the movie Castaway. If you have seen the movie the trip back on the raft was a long and torturous. In fact I remember thinking that I would have considered staying back on the island and living on coconuts. I felt honored, humbled and overwhelmed. My team felt that I would be the most likely to make it back on the raft and the most likely to change the world once I got back. It was obvious that they had more confidence in me then I had. Once the session was over I was relieved. I was relieved because the situation was never going to happen. Or so I thought.
Looking back over this past year it could be described as a torturous raft adventure. I started on a cozy relaxing tropical paradise with a team of competent individuals who slowly over time disappeared. The cozy relaxing island is now a small office full of empty cubicles. The mail boxes that use to be so full that you had to pick your mail up everyday are now empty except with a handful of bills for me. In those days if you did not pick up your phone messages daily the caller would receive the message, “this box is full”. Every day I wake up with the voice in my head saying, “you are most likely to change the world”. I send emails to people I know to find new connections, I use LinkedIn & Facebook, and I meet for coffee, lunch with whomever I think might assist me in changing the world. This past year may have been lonely at times, had ups and downs like a roller coaster but it has not been torturous. Rather it has been a time of reflection, meeting new people, reacquainting with people from my past and most of all a time to see opportunities that someone like me can be involved in that can change the world. I am grateful for the raft that I have been on and look forward to reaching shore. But most of all I am grateful for the team that I had built for seeing in me what I had not seen in myself.