In December 2021 the company I was working for hosted an offsite retreat in Puerto Vallarta. The intent was to celebrate our success thus far and to have many of the employees who had never met each other in person finally get to see their colleagues.
We did a series of icebreaker activities, and one of them always stood out to me. It was a very vulnerable exercise. You were to split into groups and then draw a graph over your timeline in life and how happy you have been over the years and where you are now. After you’re done, you explain your graph and the mountains and valleys created by the lines.
It was a risky exercise – asking colleagues to share joys and traumas – and it did bring a few tears from some of the colleagues. But it also brought everybody closer together, and it caused a bit of self-reflection in my own graph.
I decided to run through the exercise again today, just out of curiosity. It looks like this:
I was born in 1990, so I left off years 1990-1994 since I don’t recall much of my life then. But I do distinctly remember being sad in my early years and it getting worse, mostly due to issues with my dad, who had anger issues and a drinking problem. The jarring jump from 2003-2004 is when my mom left him, and notably a point at my life where I started to enjoy being alive and being able to express myself outside of what felt like an oppressive household.
That self-expression and freedom continued to make me feel happier in life throughout high school at a new town (we moved to Poplarville), then throughout college as I grew as a person, met new friends, graduated, and got my first job, one that I loved.
It dipped again when my uncle was diagnosed with cancer and again when he died in 2016, which coincided with the company I was working for losing its clients and my girlfriend at the time deciding to split. I decided to move to Chicago at that same time period to take a chance on a great job offer and to separate myself from my environment to help grieve.
From there I finally hit a great stride. I loved my job in Chicago and my colleagues. I was impressed with myself with overcoming moving to a new city alone and making it work. I found Rebecca, my fiancé, we moved in together, and we grew together and in our careers. We got Penny, our dog.
We decided to move to Colorado, then buy a house, and then get engaged. And we still continued to grow in our hobbies and build new community in our neighboring towns. We explored.
This is where I’m currently at, and the graph is a great reminder that ‘this too shall pass’, whether good or bad. Zooming out to see the bigger picture, the trend line, helps. And just reflecting on the years and events that shaped your life makes you appreciate the complexities that lead you to be you.
– Isaac