So I got engaged in January.  How strange and wonderful to be writing those words.  At age 43, I’m something of a late-bloomer when it comes to matrimony.  In the past, it always seemed like I had an excuse: I hadn’t met the right person; I wasn’t “ready”; I was too busy with work, etc..  At least in retrospect, I like to think that the reason I’d stayed single so long was I hadn’t yet “met my match.” And then along came Jen…beautiful, funny, smart (a Stanford PhD), and perhaps most importantly, a treasure hunt aficionado.  I didn’t stand a chance!

Many of my friends and family have been asking, “So how did you pop the question?  Were clues and puzzles involved?”  This would certainly have been logical, appropriate even.  We almost always write clues for each other on our anniversary. But no, the actual wedding-engagement-moment was fairly mundane, taking place at home, on the living room couch. No fancy, clever lead in.  Just a simple, “Will you marry me?” Pretty surprising, huh?  I have certainly had my share of romantic opportunities in the last four years; together, Jen and I have traveled to Vienna, Florence, Bologna, Jerusalem, Hawaii, London, Paris, Geneva, Vancouver, and Vietnam.  So why, with all these exotic locales to choose from, did I opt for a straight-forward question, right there on our beat-up old white sofa?  Truth be told, I can’t tell you, exactly. It just happened, unrehearsed. I will say that all those far-flung locales have always seemed like “clichés” to me.  Everyone pops the question in front of a beautiful sunset.  And then the precedent is set:  your married life is going to be one big extended love scene out of a romance novel. My experience, however, tells me that relationships don’t live on the tropical beaches or the cruise ships; they’re won, and lost, and won again, at home – in our very domesticity, our daily life.  By offering my hand to Jen in our living room, I like to think I was saying, “All those beautiful places we’ve been to are nice, but those are just the highs.  I’m going to be here day in and day out, for all the middles and, yes, for all the lows as well.

Teams, of course, as human relationships, operate much the same way.  They require their successes and their high points, absolutely! But the teams that really last are willing to grind it out, day in and day out, battling through the conflicts and petty squabbles that threaten to pull most teammates apart.  In the teambuilding field, one often hears about Forming/Storming/Norming/Performing: the team cycle that begins with initial formation, followed by conflict, followed by moderate success, and concluding with heightened performance levels. Myself, I think it looks more like this:  Forming, storming, norming, storming, norming, storming, norming, performing, storming, norming, etc.  In other words, relationships aren’t linear. They keep looping back on themselves, starting over, again and again. 

The trick to being “engaged”, it seems, is showing up for the peaks, showing up for the valleys, and showing up for everything in between.  I’m betting my future on it, that's for sure. J