Might As Well...

Jump.

When was the last time you did? Both feet off the ground, like you meant it. Van Halen built a hit on it in ‘84, Kris Kross did it again in ‘92, and I would bet you have to stop and think about it.

Mine was months. We were at a resort, in the game room off the bowling lanes, and my daughter threw a dart that sailed clean over the board and stuck in the wall, up high. She went after it, jumping, missing, jumping again like the missing was the fun part. So I tried too. And it hurt. A thing I have done my entire life had quietly gone rusty while I was not paying attention.

I have been chasing those small moments with her more than I used to. There is a big change coming at work, the kind that reshapes futures, and it has me holding the hours with her tighter than I ever have. I am not going to miss her growing up because a calendar or a career told me to be somewhere else.

In those moments she keeps handing me back something I had filed away. Be a little young. Be a little free. The things you have decided you are too busy or too serious or too senior for, she just does, and she is usually right.

There is a leadership lesson in that, and I did not expect to get it from my child. Somewhere on the climb we get careful. We stop jumping. We lose the version of ourselves that started at the bottom, and we drift from the people who are at the bottom right now, the youngest and newest in the building who still believe anything is possible because nobody has talked them out of it yet.

Stay close to them. Remember where you started. Do one thing today, on purpose, that you have let yourself take for granted. Be a little less serious than your title says you should be.

And every so often, both feet off the ground.

Jump.