After years of gazing at the Pacific in Baja for years, I’ve learned that the sky is the ocean in New Mexico. And, after a sudden summer monsoon rain, which usually is accompanied by stunning lightning and thunder, there’s often a quiet, luminescent rainbow. This is an apt metaphor for what happens at MEA when someone bares their soul with torment and tears in their workshop cohort and, afterward, feels the wonder of the world, not the weight of the world.
I got a hint of that during my most recent MIDLIFE CHRYSALIS podcast episode with Martha Beck. She has one of the most transformational midlife stories on the planet having been a devout Mormon and Harvard-trained academic who evolved into one of the world’s best-known coaches, a lesbian, and – for nearly ten years now – in a non-traditional relationship living with two other women (in other words, a female “thruple”). Released from the narrow societal expectations of being a trad wife to a Mormon man as well as choosing to have a Down’s syndrome child when her Harvard friends were suggesting she abort, Martha has flourished charting her own path.
As I interviewed her for this episode, I was reminded of what I faced in my early 20s. As many of you know, I’m Stephen Townsend Conley, Jr, a “Chip off the old block” of my dad. I’m the only son and oldest of three kids of two first-born parents who met at Stanford. Even though I was an introverted, creative child, I knew my charge in life was to be a better version of my Marine Captain father. Dad was the coach and I was the team’s baseball pitcher. Dad was an Eagle Scout and our troop leader and I became an Eagle Scout. I went to the same high school as Dad and, like him, swam and played water polo. I went to Stanford like Dad and met a woman who I thought would be my wife (as Dad had done). I joined a fraternity but a different one than my Dad’s (boy, was I a rebel!). Like Dad, I studied economics and business.
As you can tell, I didn’t chart my own path and I felt like I was constrained by a familial straightjacket (even though I had very loving parents). It was my 22nd summer when I was in New York City working for Morgan Stanley that I broke out of that jacket and had a romance with another man. As I joyously described my cautious first steps into a gay bar to friends, it was like when the movie “The Wizard of Oz” went from black & white to technicolor in Munchkinland. I felt free to be myself and the world was a more colorful place as a result.
But, the storm was coming when I told Dad about my summer romance. While still loving me, he couldn’t fathom my new lifestyle, especially in the early years of the AIDS crisis. His son was no longer the young man he thought I was. Unconventional reparative therapy didn’t fix me. Dad settled into realizing that Stephen Jr was going to be different, but I think one of his biggest worries was that I would no longer be ambitious. In reality, a few years of good therapy, some Esalen workshops, and a deep dive into the Enneagram and some other personality typing tools helped me to become more self-aware. Coming out as gay made me more self-aware earlier in my life than if I’d stayed on the path more traveled.
Well, being ambitious certainly wasn’t (and isn’t!) an issue as my ambition led me, three years later, to creating one of America’s first boutique hotel companies. And, freed from having to look and act a certain way, I was able to tap into some of my natural gifts that I’d been hiding, for fear that people would call me a “faggot.”
I had a great eye for design and aesthetics. Due to my ravenous desire to be liked (not unusual for many gay men), I’d learned how to become a “social alchemist,” a mixologist of people, which is very valuable in the hospitality business. Knowing that I felt like an “other,” I had deep empathetic and emotional intelligence skills and was particularly effective in leading diverse teams. And, unlike some of my competitive classmates who went into macho industries like investment banking and venture capital, I chose the service industry which felt noble to me as we helped people feel safe, cared for, and a sense of belonging. Indian philosopher Rabindranath Tagore’s quote became my anthem and influenced why I named my company Joie de Vivre:
I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold, service was joy.
So, what’s the moral of this story? On the other side of your messy middle – when you may be charting a path that’s at odds with how the world has seen you – there is a rainbow that will lead you to the pot of gold that will be your authentic, precious life. And, when you take this path, you may find that you have hidden skills that you’ve been hiding or neglecting and that’s where the gold is buried.
If you’d like to join me and Martha Beck (I can’t wait for this workshop!) September 22-27 in Santa Fe, you can learn more about “Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity and Finding Your Life’s Purpose.”
-Chip