You know that thing you do when someone gets too close to the truth?

That automatic deflection, that practiced laugh, that sudden need to check your phone?

That thing, which you might do differently in hindsight, is not a permanent feature.

That thing is your programming, not you, and changing programming is part of the lifecycle of all humans and all software.

Welcome to your refactor.

Before your life is cracked open to the splintering light piercing every mask bestowed by childhood, and after the inflection point, there is a crossroads.

The moment of decision, the crisis (or crossroads in Greek), is the point at which the decision is made to turn inward, to ascend by entering the void within.

Default settings are installed by childhood, society, and fear, and add up to an operating manual used by adults but written for a time (and childhood) already long gone.

In software, legacy code must be patched (with minor fixes) and refactored (overhauled).

There is no hiding from a bug in critical code with the potential to take your entire sales process offline.

We face the music, complain heartily about the authors of the legacy code, roll up our sleeves, and get into it.

When at last you burst the bubble of ego and swallow the unsettled feeling understandably accompanying the void, humility is the reward—a gentle, peaceful medicine to the overstimulated soul.

A lot of words to say this: open the box in the closet under the clothes behind the winter sheets.

These corners of ourselves.

They will relentlessly emerge again until we hear our triggered moments as the message they hold.

All of your defaults and "knee-jerk" reactions, or "just how I am" moments, are not truly you.

Your default behavior is a mirror to the parts that aren't aligned with the rest of you.

One way, no other, in the end, we all confront the void.

The terror of the void keeps us small and safe from changing.

You can't fix what you won't face, and in life and software, the debug log and the moments you feel ashamed are the diagnostic tools for understanding root cause.

Humility emerges from confronting the void, and agency is born from embracing the chaos and contradictions of our inner world.

That feeling the moment you lose the audience, that tension, right there…

What do you do with it?

Simon Sinek once lost his line while delivering a talk, early in his career. He was mortified, of course, but took a beat and then graciously asked if the audience would kindly remind him of his last line.

The audience did, Sinek continued, and at the end received an enthusiastic and warm standing ovation; he had connected through the moment of tension rather than leaning away from it.

Sinek transformed that moment into audience connection; his grace and humility, which is charming in the most genuine of ways, made way for connection.

That moment is when your mask slips, and you react —by default or by awareness — in one of a million possible human ways. This moment of decision to crumble or open is the inflection point of growth toward change and connection, or stasis and defensive posture.

The audience is waiting for permission to be human right along with you, to experience the passion of your pitch or the inspiration of your story; let them experience the gift of your humanity—give yourself that gift.

When you are in a room full of humans, eyes on you, and you are telling a story, delivering a speech, or explaining the features of your product, you are not fighting the energy in the room; you choose to work with it rather than allow the frequency to overrun your circuitry.

Aligning your energy takes command of the moment and relaxes the audience. The people want to be entertained, or in the very least, enlightened and informed.

When you learn to smooth the contours of your inner landscape, you are taking the lead in your own play; the nerves remain, and your reaction to them evolves.

You are not a lost soul or a broken person; you are running old code on an exquisitely dynamic and dimensional system. The tools are available right inside. The band Oasis pierced the foggy veil of the '90s era grunge despair with the clarion call "Slip inside the eye of your mind; don't you know you might find a better place to play?"

Open to hidden corners, to the discomfort of being human, you are no longer alone.

You are one of every living human tracing a journey across lifetimes, and we are part of every human who lived before and after we have lived.

In our world of one human within one community, this work is transformative.

It is also timely.

Seth Godin and I agree that now is an opportunity-rich time, turbulent and uncertain, and precisely the fodder of all creative moments in history.

Now is precisely the time to do this work, to turn inward to what is knowable, to your raison d'être, your reason for being here.

The generations alive now have a collective fingerprint; we will leave this shadow in our wake once we are gone.

If we're all running inherited code and debugging simultaneously, what happens when we all patch at once?

What is our gestalt?

That word that sums the wave of a generation as it crests into the shadowy bend of the rear-view mirror.

The patterns, the loops, the recursive functions of generational trauma play in real-time as our thumb reaches for the next scroll.

This time, right now, we possess both the language to describe our internal operating systems and the existential pull to roll up our sleeves individually and collectively and begin to refactor the outdated code, legacy from the best attempts of the past.

Our earlier versions brought us to where we are today; the work of today requires scale, security, and dynamism, and with these new requirements, a refactor of legacy code is necessary.

We are not breaking down. We are breaking open.

The box in the closet under the clothes behind the winter sheets? That is where your shame is hiding, protecting your power and keeping you small and static.

Next time you feel that automatic deflection rising, that practiced laugh loading, stop. Watch what runs beneath it. That is your source code. That is where the real work begins.

Be curious. Question your patterns. And be kind to yourself; you are worthy, my friend.

-Sonia a.k.a. SuperSonic

Examine Your World With Curiosity

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