“Being a trailblazer is difficult. It’s the road less traveled for a reason. It’s filled with doubt, discomfort, detours, and dead ends. Lined with naysayers, puzzled looks, and unsolicited advice from those stuck on the beaten path. And only scattered with subtle signs that you’re on the right path.”
— George Raveling
It’s still dark out.
I’m sitting here thinking about how much of life comes down to two things: creating or consuming. Every day, in small ways, we’re either making something or taking something in. And how we move between those two shapes everything.
For much of my life, I spent it trying to create. I remember a distinct moment in my early twenties, telling myself that I wanted to spend my life creating. I do think much of what’s happened in the decades since has been driven by ambition, maybe even insecurity. And if I’m being honest, a lot of that creating was probably for me—trying to prove something, trying to matter.
We move between these two states all the time—sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. Sometimes we create good things. Sometimes we don’t. But it’s always happening.
When my friend forces me to do leg day, like he did yesterday, I’m creating.
When I binge the wildly entertaining show 1923, I’m consuming.
And when the cursor just blinks at me while I try to figure out what the organization should focus on, I’m creating.
And whether we realize it or not, we’re always consuming part of the people around us too. That consumption doesn’t have to be passive. Actually, it’s not passive at all. Be careful who you’re around. Good people make you better. Bad people make you worse.
And when you find the good ones, slow down. Stop. Sit across from them. Really look into their eyes. What are the color of their eyes?
Notice who they are, what they’ve done, and what they hope to do.
Let them teach you.
Take in all of their lessons.
Learn from them.
This is how we get better. And maybe just as importantly, this is how we create real connection. Because ultimately, it’s all about relationships. And it’s through those relationships that we find ways to work together to create things that actually matter.
I’m often asked about balance. How do you achieve it? How do you balance family and work and purpose and health?
It’s natural to reach up and take that word down off the shelf and try to apply it here, as if life is best lived in perfect symmetry. But I’ve come to believe balance isn’t the goal. Especially not in this case.
Because if all we do is balance—if we simply match every bit of creating with consuming—we end up neutral.
We leave life even.
The world doesn’t need neutral.
It needs progress.
It needs people who create more good than they consume.
People who push forward.
Who make things better.
The world wasn’t handed to us. It was built by our ancestors—
Through work.
Through sacrifice.
Through creation.
Brick by brick.
Life by life.
They consumed what came before, yes—but they added something.
They left something behind.
Those people gave us a life that, for all its flaws, is still the best time in history to be alive. And that gives us responsibility. To create. To add what matters. And to remove what hurts.
What I consume, I become. And what I become is what I create.
It’s not two different things.
It’s one motion.
What I take in doesn’t just stay with me.
It leaks out. It shows up in who I am.
In what I notice.
In what I ignore.
In what I say and how I say it.
And maybe most importantly,
it shows up in how I make people feel when they’re around me.
Somewhere inside all of that—creating, consuming, failing, trying—there’s a question worth asking: what does it feel like to be on the other side of me?
Because I know, from my own experience, that I have the power to shape the environment around me.
I can create environments that lift people up.
Or environments that pull people down.
I do it with my kids.
I do it with my colleagues.
And I do it with strangers, in small moments—the guy in the flat cap at the fuel pump next to me somewhere in South Dakota. We exchanged a smile on a random Tuesday morning. Hours later, by total chance, we ended up at the same roadside hotel in a sea of roadside hotels. Another smile. Small moment. A nudge to each other that we aren’t alone. Keep going.
One of the most important questions I can ask myself is whether I create environments that help people move toward their potential, or environments that pull them back and make them smaller.
It’s a real question. Sometimes it’s a hard one. But it’s worth asking. And whatever the answer is today, it doesn’t have to be the answer tomorrow. That’s true for almost every part of who we are.
Two thousand years ago, Marcus Aurelius wrote in his journal,
“My job is to be good.”
Maybe part of being good is paying attention. Paying attention to what you consume. And to what you spend your time creating.
Because whether it’s French fries or carrots, gossip or truth, noise or real work—what you take in shapes you. And what you create shapes what you leave behind.
And if you’re lucky enough someday to be sitting in that white rocking chair on a little porch as the sun goes down over a little green hill, God willing with some grandkids tossing a frisbee, you’ll want to know that you learned, you created, and hopefully you left them better than you found them.
Until then—
Take care. Be good.
Kelly
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