“It sounds like an untenable situation — but he remains upbeat.”
Several months ago, I was struggling with no longer wanting to write about personal development and human-heartedness.
“Should I rebrand?”, I asked myself. I had rebranded my Substack once before (almost twice if you noticed). Everything that I had been writing felt completely untenable. I had no more desire, interest, or energy to box myself in. Language geek that I am, I looked up the word, untenable, in the dictionary.
Like any good spelling bee, the contestant asks, ‘Can you use the word in a sentence?’ I wanted to be sure the meaning could express what I wanted to communicate. I laughed at the subtle irony of the sentence above because the example perfectly describes this ‘tension’ I’ve been feeling.
Untenable (adjective): (especially of a position or view) not able to be maintained or defended against attack or objection.
Do you ever wish there was a way to solve all the world’s problems?
That’s a tension I live with, fully aware that it’s unlikely I or anyone else will find a single, elegant solution to end the possibility of nuclear war, anti-2SLGBTQ+ prejudice, economic injustice, and climate change — to name a few global challenges.
But I’d still like to encourage others to act for the greater good, especially if they have more agency than I do.
Call that hopeful pessimism or pessimistic optimism.
Either way, my intention is to share my queer points of view, solution-oriented rants, and contemplations about morality to cultivate understanding, human dignity, and the so-called common good.
And thus, the re-birth/re-brand of my Substack from “Cultivating Human-Heartedness” to, “Untenable.”
From a purely selfish standpoint…
I want to take risks with my ideas to see how things land and to write or podcast about topics that don’t fit with the work I do as a leadership coach. I want to be free to write without confining myself to a container of this or that niche.
My best intention is to challenge my own beliefs and viewpoints, as well as the norms within frameworks that I might not challenge on other platforms.
Many of us are lost in the weeds of political correctness, over-labelling, and over-defining to the point of being esoteric.
The end goal for this Substack is to apply critical thinking without the presumption of being right. I don’t have all the answers, but I might be able to challenge myself and others by being open to new ideas and ways of thinking.
From an altruistic standpoint…
While I don’t profess to have all the answers, we need to have more engaging conversations, dialogues, and dialectics about the challenges we are facing that affect human dignity, universal rights and freedoms, and life on this planet.
My sincere hope is to interact with you in the comments in a thoughtful, mutually respectful, and solutions-oriented way toward transformational improvements for all life on this planet.
That hope is an invitation.
Attacks and judgements don’t move the needle towards understanding and connection. This is my sandbox, so let’s all play nice!
