The People & Places That Shape Us
Parents who disappear + Episode 4 of Thursdays with Uri: Inventing!
As I touched on in my last post, I’m fascinated by how places and people shape us. Spend enough time in New York and you will jaywalk. Spend enough time in Germany and you won’t.
Despite growing up in Winnipeg, I didn’t realize that from sunrise to sunset people are out rowing, paddle boarding, jet-skiing, and kayaking on the Red River until we stayed in this AirBnb** on the river! Suddenly, I find myself wanting to be on it in a way I never have before.
Might I have gotten really into rowing had I lived right here growing up, the same way kids who grow up by the beach or mountains get into surfing or snowboarding?
I’ve written before about how this phenomenon plays out in our careers; we tend to follow in our parents’ footsteps, and then we become what we do.
I was years into my career, with a large focus on helping others’ not follow in their parents footsteps, when I realized that I had done exactly that.
Last week, I was reminded of how we’re so shaped by our surroundings that we often barely recognize it.
I finally watched Sam Now: an award winning documentary about a 17 year-old boy’s search for his mother, who went missing when he was 14.
From the beginning, I found myself asking how a parent (a mom!!) could possibly do this to their children (the filmmakers had essentially ruled out mental illness/additions/foul play). HOW?! And how a family could be so dysfunctional that no one was talking about it?! My heart was really breaking for Sam.
As they begin their journey, the filmmaker—Sam’s half-brother, whose mom is also mysteriously awol—consults two of his friends who “had experience with missing parents.” What?! Two other people in his circle?! HOW!? That felt strange.
And then it hit me.
I too had experience with a missing parent. Odd that this didn’t occur to me for the weeks I had been meaning to watch the documentary, and through the whole first 30 minutes of the film…
We too never talked about it as a family, which may in part be why my memories are so blurry. So blurry that I would almost doubt my own recollection, were it not for a couple very vivid ones.
I remember being relieved that he was gone, so I could go to the private school I so desperately wanted to go to without him lecturing me about the evils of wealth and capitalism. That tells me this all began sometime around when I was 12 or 13.
I remember overhearing my mom telling a woman named Lana, the single mom to my brother’s friend Eric, that she had no idea where my dad was.
I remember I would sometimes come home from school knowing he had been in my mom’s house. The smell—a distinct mix of smoke, alcohol, and body odour—lingered on the cushions of our couch. I remember hoping my mom wouldn’t notice.
I remember my mom firing her cleaning lady when she grew tired of stuff like her jewelry and CDs going missing. She changed the locks, and I never smelled my dad in our house again.
How long did this go on for? I’m honestly not sure. If I had to guess, I’d say we had zero contact for maybe one or two years, and very limited contact for maybe one or two years on either side of that?
I know we were in contact at least by the time I graduated from high school, because I didn’t want him to come to that graduation, knowing how much he would stand out. I think he came?
Just as Sam went on living his life, almost as if nothing had happened, I was actually pretty well-adjusted and happy. I had plenty of friends and did well in school. It wasn’t a front. I didn’t feel like anything was missing. I didn’t feel unloved or abandoned. I still don’t, though I do now acknowledge that this experience nevertheless shaped me.*
Like: I want to know, desperately, why people do what they do. I’ve been studying my dad, and people like him, my whole life. Long enough to learn that some things will never make sense to me. Our brains simply don’t work the same way. I can’t apply my way of thinking to anyone else’s.
Like: I want anyone going through a challenging situation with a family member to know they’re not alone.
Like: I know that things can be ok, even when they are not.
Like: I have learned to be pretty damn good at accepting ambiguity and living with questions. Including the big one: what actually happened to my dad (and Sam’s mom)?
The answer is still not clear.
The explanation from Sam’s mom was infuriatingly vague. Wholly unsatisfying. I must have expected the same from my dad because I shut him down immediately the one time he tried to tell me “what happened all those years.”
Would it even be possible to get a satisfactory explanation? Some details would inevitably be left out, others massaged, others embellished, others misremembered. Honestly, I’d rather live with the question.
I don’t know that I can even answer for myself why I do what I do. I have interview-ready answers, sure, but it’s one giant question mark if I’m really honest with myself. Did I play soccer because I really wanted to, or because it’s all I saw in my neighbourhood? Did I go to Columbia because it was the right business school for me, or because it was a good friend’s girlfriend’s dream school, and I wanted to beat her at her own game? Do I gravitate to the startup world because I enjoy it, or because I can’t actually get a job with a big corporation?
I kinda like having so many questions to wonder about. It reinforces for me that the world, this universe, is just one giant mystery to enjoy.
4. Thursdays With Uri
In this episode we discuss where you Uri thinks you can find the “right answer” and the value of having an inventor's mindset.
Jen: Hello?
Uri: Hello.
Jen: Welcome to the fourth episode of Thursdays with Uri.
Uri: Yes.
Jen: Even though it's a Sunday.
Uri: Yes.
Jen: So we just spent the weekend camping, and on one of the hikes, you said you think you need to become a better inventor?
Uri: There should be more hits than misses. That's like, something that a lot of people want to use or is really fun to use and or look at. I mostly invent things for the humour of it and not for the application of it. And so being more deliberate about inventing things that are not just to make my friends laugh or to make you laugh.
Jen: Although do you think that would take the fun away?
Uri: No, it's the same process. It's like cooking for yourself, cooking for friends, it's still fun cooking.
Jen: Give me a sense of the range of things you have invented.
Uri: So when I was a kid, I invented more physical things. I'd make my own spy equipment. I modified binoculars and radios. So that's like when I was a kid. And then programming. This is when it kind of became fun. I made a binary clock. This is like 2008. That, and a little tool to do my homework. And I remember it took me like a whole week to do it. I could have done the entire assignment in a day. But then I came the following week and I showed the class and the professor and everyone was like really impressed.
Jen: It reminds me of how you built the Wordle bot.
Uri: Paulina.
Jen: Paulina! To solve Wordle for you. Like you had more fun building the bot than just doing the puzzle.
Uri: Yeah.
Jen: Why did you spend essentially two weekends, probably a total of like 40 hours, building a tiny desk lamp that you could have bought for $20 off of Amazon?
Uri: Well, I wanted a lamp that had a particular look. I felt like all the desk lamps that I saw on Amazon just didn't have that aesthetic that I wanted and so I built it.
Jen: Did you enjoy the process of building?
Uri: Oh yeah, it was so much fun. My definition of an invention is making something that I think I should make. It's kind of that simple.
Jen: I've come to see inventing differently thanks to you because you say you're inventing when you're cooking a meal. When I would have just called it cooking. But I think that bringing an inventor's attitude when you do something, like cook, I think it brings more fun to the activity itself, but I also think it taps into this innate drive we all have to create. It reframed creativity for me. It used to be that I thought to be creative really meant " I'm artistic." But to be creative as literally to create.
Uri: The question is why do I call things an invention? It reminds me of being a child again. Where, " What are you doing?" "Oh I'm inventing." There's like a freedom and there's no rules or I'm making them up as I go along. And who cares if someone else has those same rules or they've written books about it? I'm just doing what I feel is right.
Jen: Do you think others would benefit from considering more of what they do inventing?
Uri: I think more people should just not take themselves as seriously. Yeah. Just go play with the thing. Sit in it and have fun. Get dirty. Make a few mistakes.
Jen: You bring like an experimentation attitude to all your endeavors, like, even within a single drawing, you're continuously improving it. And getting the details right. No one ever taught me the process to draw. And I think you do that in the kitchen. Probably with software. I don't know that that approach is intuitive for a lot of people.
Uri: Yeah, I think a lot of people want to get it right. They want to get the right answer first. And I don't believe that's where it is.
Jen: Well, that's enough for now, until next time.
Uri: Bye. Bye.
Jen: Bye bye.
Not knowing, and knowing that you probably will never know, is very hard to accept. But when you do, it’s so relaxing!