I am in a time of flux. I am in a time of transition. I am in a time of metamorphosis.

When we were all younger my wife and I started a coffee shop called Chrysalis Coffeehouse. Do you know what a chrysalis is? Maybe you do, but if not you should because it’s beautiful.

Before about 2012, if you would have asked me how a caterpillar became a butterfly I’d have said something about going into a cocoon and maybe one leg grows up into a longer bone, (insects have bones, right?), and then maybe the wing sort of webs down from that, and presto-chango, it’s a butterfly or something!

That is not how it works, friends. Moths form cocoons, silk structures into which they envelop themselves and out from which they emerge.

A chrysalis by contrast is fully the insect itself. The hard outer shell is a part of the critter, and on the inside, far from growing into something it actually changes into something new. Metamorphosis. The whole of the animal liquefies into something magical, reforms, reconstitutes and regrows into a different animal altogether. It’s a beautiful, and I’ll say it again, magical exercise in nature’s way.

So it goes, we decided, with coffee. We were a metamorphosis point in the life cycle of a coffee bean, taking a hard, barely edible, waxy green coffee bean and, through the application of heat and pressure, transforming it into something palatable and even more than that, pleasurable.

At that time we also saw ourselves in that imagery. I can look back now and see that we’ve pretty much always been at the beginning of some new change, some new way. It is the blessing and the curse of being us. I look around and see that not everyone is so lucky to live this way.

As we did business it became increasingly clear that not everyone knew what a chrysalis was, and certainly not everyone knew the beauty of how they worked, and the name presented more challenges than we’d intended. Eventually we changed again, rebranding and becoming something different.

So, I feel, it is going in our lives today. I can feel the winds of change. They have ebbed and flowed in our lives often enough that I’m no longer particularly afraid of them, though I know they almost always bring pain along with new life. I am turning to liquid. Again.

I will not discuss all of these things now; I have revealed some of them already. My children are growing. My business is changing. Things never stay the same for long, and they will continue on that trajectory I think.

The most important thing I do now, the most important thing to me, is this values exercise. It never gets old and I could do it every day. In the beginning I did the exercise with everyone—I was ravenous. You could not be on my doorstep for long before I’d ask you to “do a fun values sort with me.” I have my electrician’s values. I have my old babysitter’s values. I have my friend’s son’s girlfriend’s values and I have my former life coach’s values. It is what I would like to be doing with the rest of my life.

It’s not the cards, though, you know that by now. It’s my love for people and my belief that we do have this life! We are more than we know, more than we think we are. It’s about coming up under the people around me and giving them something, anything that gives them hope or a little more of a vision for their own futures. For their children’s futures. As I write this it feels self aggrandizing. Oh, that I could be a benefit to others! Who am I that I think I could?

But I’m here, I have these cards, I have these ideas, and I’m not losing heart or interest. I’m continually discovering meaning in life.

As part of this pursuit, I have begun developing my Values Tree which I will describe again here, briefly for your reference.

Our Lived Experiences happen to us. Around us. Without our command or request. They’re the sun rays and raindrops falling on our faces and we cannot control them. We cannot even predict them much of the time.

Our responses to those experiences inform our Values which in turn inform our Beliefs, which I believe are really just crystalized, (or calcified) values.

Our beliefs and values inform our Vision, the “what success looks like”, and Mission, the “how we’re going to do it” of our lives. For me, these things are fluid. More fluid than I’m altogether comfortable with. But here we are.

Our mission informs our Goals, the things we’re trying to see made real, our goals inform our Tasks, and our tasks inform our Time Management.

So you see, there’s a line of continuity between our lived experiences and our time management, (the things we do with our hands and think with our minds and say with our mouths.

For me, for the purpose of these essays, I see meaning in life in relation to our Vision and Mission. What are we going to do.

I grew up with a vision for the next life. Everything was viewed and filtered by the coming age. And now I don’t know! I literally, honestly, just don’t know what to think about the future. I don’t know what to think about next week, let alone the split second after my final breath. And as I’ve said numerous times in the course of this project, we know only this life for sure. We know we have our next breath, our next minute, our next day. What will we do with them? What does success look like for us?

For me, it looks like continuing to dig deeper here. Continuing to try to identify what’s making this work in my head. It’s something about people. It’s something about you. It’s something about us, and about making tomorrow brighter. We’re the only ones who can. It’s something about helping people know themselves better. This writing project is specifically to help me get to know myself better. I hope people read these, I’m gratified that some people seem to be. I’ve gotten some positive feedback which feels nice. I want people’s kindnesses. I love them.

But ultimately this is an exploration of my own thoughts surrounding these cards and the ideas they stir up. And ultimately success looks like you being more mindful of your own values in life. Which is nearly impossible to measure. Classic Nicholas. Setting unattainable goals informed by an immeasurable mission in life.

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