Journey Into the Unknown | Chapter 2: Hats and Masks | July 2025

I wear a lot of hats. And masks. As a parent, husband, board member, consultant, friend, brother, and more, I feel unmoored, at times, trying to reconcile all of the roles I inhabit. I play, I work, I love, I rest, I discipline, I teach, I coach, I gather. These are the roles we live. These can be the facades we put on, depending if we are at school, at home, or at work. Our lives are so blended now, the lines between the personal and the professional becoming more blurry by the day. Covid further eroded that distinction, and consulting from home blurs the line even more.

My mom has Alzheimer’s, a terrible disease that erases your short term memory, among other devastating effects. My mom loves being the center of attention, and though she still can be, she forgets it in the ensuing hours, sometimes minutes. I am thinking about memory a lot these days, how it creates our identity, informs our behavior, and helps us plan for the future. What are we without our memory? Who are we if we can only recollect our childhood, our college years, or the early years of marriage, if we can’t remember what we did this morning? This is the world my mom inhabits. She is a shell of her former self–still cheery, ebullient, extroverted as ever–but so confused, always playing catch up, and often without much energy. She loves wearing masks–the literal, colorful kind–and I can see what is so attractive about that. We can hide behind our masks, we can pretend to be someone else, we can lower our inhibitions–feel alive.

When I went on my Journey last month, I wore a mask for the 6 hours of my trip. It allowed me to see things in my head, my subconscious, memory, that I may not have if I were open to seeing the world around me. In a mask, we can say things, do things, feel things that we are often scared of doing. I find myself wondering, what else would I say, or do, if I were so uninhibited? What would I hear from others, if they were masked?

I think often about the masked men working for ICE and raiding stores, farms, and other workplaces in Los Angeles. They must certainly feel a level of uninhibited agency, of anonymity, taking people off the streets, away from their families, to who knows where. Would they act this way if they did not wear masks? What do their eyes say, when that is all that is shown? I think about what my Jewish grandparents and many others went through in the 1930s in Europe, and imagine the similarities of other people’s disappearing, under the power of the State, and what that forebodes for us, now.

A dear friend and colleague of mine recently shared the image of putting his hands up, and hands down, from time to time, to remind him of what he can control, and what is out of his control. I spend so much of my time, both personally and professionally, helping others, fixing problems, finding solutions. That is my hands down work. I spend less time letting go, surrendering, trusting the process. That is my hands up work that I need to improve. The more I repeat that mantra of “hands up”--to trust the process, to let my kids figure out their own way, to let my dad decide what is right for my mom–that is where I find contentment. Happiness.

We recently went on our annual summer vacation, this year to Frisco, CO. We had incredible bike rides, winding hikes, fishing, and a too-close-for-comfort Pontoon boat ride! Here’s to letting go, surrendering to a higher power, trusting the process… And finding a good hat to wear…