Giant Steps

Subtitle: mythbuilding exercise no.10

This article is a celebration of the things that got me to where I am today, wherever you see that as. As such, the links embedded connect directly to songs, poems, videos, and other media that have played a role in shaping my path. The title is both a spiritual response to Daniel Hulter’s article “A Few Steps Further” and a reference to John Coltrane’s seminal song Giant Steps. For the best experience, I’d recommend exploring each link in its entirety before continuing to the next, feel free, even, to take a few days to get through this article. (Warning: some of the links, especially the music, contain explicit content.)

“How do we get more of you [black people/people of color] in Air Force innovation”, someone asked me recently. This article is my response to that question, though it’s not going to look like how you think it will. You see, I don’t believe that a linear retelling of my story would be accurate. I don’t think anyone’s linear narrative of their lives is accurate. No matter how detailed someone is they will always miss the meandering, maundering, the dead ends, and double backs that are rife throughout our experience. In hindsight, our lives are so linear, but in the present they are a multitude.

I present this narrative, my path to innovation in the Air Force or wherever else you see me as, not as a story, but as a mythology. After all, in mythbuilding exercise no.9 (video | lyrics), my favorite artist Rory Ferreira quoted Sun Ra saying, “if you’re not a myth, whose reality are you?”

A Portrait of an Airman as a Young Musician

Long before I was involved in innovation, long before my path in life even professionally intersected with the Air Force (my dad was also in the Air Force, and is about to retire from the reserves in a few months [congrats, dad!]), I was a high schooler struggling with the multitudes within. It was even before I would grow acquainted to the very person who said, “I am large, I contain multitudes”. In years prior to high school, I devoted myself to a book about becoming an inventor. And even, for a while, spent endless time in class sketching ideas. Yet, I noticed there was something missing for me, the people for whom the inventions mattered.

In high school, I abandoned my ideas of being an inventor and focused my efforts on music. By that point I had already sunken nearly ten years into various instruments. Between all the instruments I played, in high school I focused on mainly the bass guitar and tuba. For symphonic and marching performances I played tuba. My intention with the Tuba was to play a role that no one else wanted: to support the rest of the symphony in sound while rarely ever being noticed. That idea carried over to my involvement with the bass guitar as well, playing in jazz ensembles and playing a few gigs in Hollywood as the backing band to a singer in my area. I had a chance to play Divertimento, Op. 42 by Vincent Persichetti. The fourth movement within, called Burlesque featured a solo by, of all things, the Tuba. This idea, followed by my chance upon music of the bassist Victor Wooten, specifically his song, Overjoyed (which in turn is a cover of Stevie Wonder’s song), brought to me an important lesson: even those who support can find their way to the forefront. 

Then I zagged.

In my last year of high school I joined the choir, mostly for fun, partly to push the boundaries of what a “band kid” was. My first solo performance happened a few months after where I sang All of Me by Frank Sinatra. His baritone gave me confidence in my own deep and often mocked voice. Regardless of how it went, my next move was to form a quartet where we performed throughout regularly for a few months. This vocal stint ended with my studying the song The Vagabond by Vaughn Williams. The line “Not to autumn will I yield, not to winter even” still sticks around in my mind, and we’ll find an interesting parallel a bit later in this article.

There was yet a last idea that burned within me during this time, which continues to this day. Within me was the soul of a novelist. Each time I strove to realize that part of me, I failed. It wasn’t my time to realize this part of myself.

To The Military

How did this musician, inventor-bent, aspiring novelist end up in the military? An accident, mostly. I was uncomfortable with the academic route, not confident that I would pursue the thing that was right for me. I needed some time to “figure myself out”. The military promised that I would learn something interesting--a language (ended up being two languages)--and, more importantly, time to be whoever it is I was trying to be. 

I won’t go into detail about my time in Basic Military Training, but I will highlight something interesting that happened during because it qualifies who I am as a person. During one of those long BMT marches to who-knows-where, for whatever reason, and during a time of less than quality sleep. I had a vision of sorts. This is notable for two reasons. One, I have what is called aphantasia--I have virtually no ability to picture things in my head. I have nearly zero visual memory (my audio memory, on the other hand, is much more developed). The second was that it seemed to unearth a craving I’d otherwise been ignoring at that time: a craving for knowledge, a craving to “grow and expand and consume whole galaxies” as Rory said in his song “take advantage of the naysayer” (lyrics explicit content warning). The vision itself was simple, me at a desk. Reading. It’s had remarkable staying power regardless.

What would end up being my first enlistment was an exercise in navigating constant change. Within the first three years I learned my language was no longer useful to the Air Force. So, I decided to learn another (married the love of my life, my best friend, during my second trip back). I was continuing along the long and narrow road (Turkish performance, translation) that Turkish poet A??k Veysel mystified me with in my time learning Turkish.

A Return to Reading

Sometime during this first enlistment, I finally started reading again. I was finally able to feed that ravenous curiosity that I’d been letting fester.

I read everything I could get my hands on, returning to books I read in school but couldn’t enjoy, exploring my interests in philosophy and psychology (I’ll come back to this aspect later). The highlight of all the books I read through this era was a book I heard Oprah celebrating. It’s a book about a shepherd boy in southern Spain who had a dream about a great treasure, and the journey that it caused. The title of the book was the main draw for me: The Alchemist.

See I am inspired by the concept of alchemy, the precursor to chemistry. I learned about it in my high school chemistry class and it never left my mind. I’m now stuck forever with the concept of people pursuing to make the Master Work, one part the elixir of life and the other part Philosopher’s stone. The power to cure all ills and transform any metal into gold.

I’m also forever stuck with another paradigm to what that whole alchemy movement meant. Aurum nostrum non est aurum vulgi, or our gold is not ordinary gold. It’s a phrase commonly attributed to alchemy. This, among other things in alchemic history (which is a baffling phrase to write), points to alchemy being much more than a physical journey of transforming lead to gold, but as a metaphor for transforming the soul; bettering the soul, even.

So, when I finally read Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, it all came to a head. The book is infinitely quotable. Pick a page and you’re likely to find something interesting. A quote that’s stuck with me since reading it the first time is, “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

Though not really in this time period, I want to use this section of the myth to cover other writers who have left an indelible mark on me. Maya Angelou (all of her work really, but I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, specifically). We have a quote of hers hanging in our living room. bell hooks for teaching me, reaffirming in me, the transformational nature of love in her work All About Love. William Zinsser who unknowingly taught me to write, even though I break many, if not all, of his recommendations. When I write poetry I feel like I’m always trying to be Langston Hughes. I, too, am America, aren’t I? I could go on, but I would be remiss if I didn’t include Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Jasmin and I both have underlined and written in copies of Love in the Time of Cholera), and Lorca. 

The Seeds of Discontent

Those who know me from my time in Korea likely know me as someone who was incurably “salty”, bitter and disagreeable to a fault. The work there was monotonous. I felt like I was going nowhere in a mission that was ancient, near decrepit, and, worst of all, immune to change unless someone with a rockers said it (for those not in the military, I mean someone who was a Senior Non-commissioned Officer).

Many times I tried to push for change. Improving the quality of life for the Airman around me (and for myself too, of course). But the so-called leadership wouldn’t budge. And when they finally did budge around one of the ideas I brought forth, it was packaged as someone else’s idea. This, I feel, is a more common experience than we let on. It’s a staple joke among “lower enlisted” that those above us will take credit for the work we did. On a certain scope, maybe it’s right, on others, it’s utterly baffling that it’s normalized. 

None of this was helped by the fact that I was, in all honesty, kind of disrespectful. Or, more appropriately, I wasn’t respectful in the ways that the Air Force deems appropriate. Part of my familial experience was open disagreement. Doing so didn’t discredit the other. My adolescence was marked by disagreements and debates between all my family members. I disagreed openly with my parents, in a way that wasn’t disrespectful, but also out in the open for the discourse to be heard, ruminated on, and commented upon. There is an inherent clash here that I still have to navigate. Ultimately, I feel there is value in disagreeing with people in the open. Meanwhile, the Air Force discourages any type of open disagreement with a higher ranking person’s decision. Much to their detriment.  

A Detour: Philosophy and Psychology

As mentioned, I finally started reading. When it wasn’t fiction and poetry, it was non-fiction. I dove deep into philosophy and psychology. Why these topics? My only guess is a concept I learned through reading Plato’s dialogues about Socrates. See, Socrates said that he had a “divine sign” within him that steers him away from certain things. Perhaps my divine sign led me towards philosophy and psychology (and continues to lead me toward certain things). 

The biggest philosophical influence in my life, however, is the French-Algerian philosopher Albert Camus, the second youngest Nobel prize winner in literature to date. In his short essay Return to Tipasa, Camus, perhaps unknowingly, reverberates the spiritual successor to the lyrics I highlighted in The Vagabond: “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer”. 

What happens when a meaning making being is confronted with a universe that cares not about the meaning that the being has constructed? This is the absurd condition as highlighted by Camus. Humans are constantly trying to find meaning in life, and life, or the universe, has no care for that meaning we try to ascribe. This is what Camus wrote about in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus, and his novel The Stranger. This is what I was experiencing; the meaning I built up and the universe that seemed not to care about it. This contention and this philosophy of how to revolt from this “condition” became part of my foundation. To revolt is one of the few ways one can continue to live in the absurd.

I got intimately familiar with Abraham Maslow and what he really meant by his hierarchy of needs. I read Jung and realized that he, too had an interest in alchemy. I explored, and continue to explore, all kinds of psychology, focusing on the more holistic movements of the 1900s. This would fuel a lot of my early understanding of the design field that I've ultimately found myself in.

At Last: To Innovation

I bounced back from my time in Korea, inspired by art, literature, and learning. I carried that momentum to pursue whatever I felt would bring the most valuable to those that I could. At the end of the day, I didn’t care who you were, if what we were doing was damaging to my wingmen who had to carry out the tasks, I was there trying to fix it. At times I ran into the rank boundary; the things I felt needed to be changed, and had plans to change were not equal to the scope of my rank, and therefore I was often ignored. It was clear in those times that I was outgrowing my container, as it were. Being a Korean linguist wasn’t serving me anymore, and, in fact, it was hindering me. Being a Staff Sergeant was hindering me. I couldn’t shed my rank, but I could spend some time outside my career field. (And in the process found a group of people who aren’t as… formal about rank as much of the Air Force is.)

My first stint outside of being a Korean linguist I was a “language enabled data scientist” which is a fancy way of saying I was a linguist who knew how to do some data engineering with Python. (at some point in this journey I taught myself to code [for all of those who want to learn to code? Python’s a pretty good starting point]). Ultimately, however, I saw that my team was struggling to find an identity and I had little-to-no ability to influence that identity, so I left.

This leaving ended up being the most significant and life-changing move I could make. I chose an innovation office not knowing what to expect.

The Last Few Months

At the time of my joining, my innovation office cared about design thinking and bringing various facilitated methods like those made popular by design thinking and design sprints to those in our wing. The idea was to empower airmen with these skills so that they could bring about better innovation. The prospect was exhilarating; bringing methods that could potentially empower enlisted members to solve hard problems was a no-brainer. I pushed myself to understand as much as I could, using my curiosity to gain more understanding on these concepts.

During my time in this space I heard ramblings, and sometimes exaltations, about someone named Daniel Hulter. People seemed to be in constant praise about him, and I'll admit, I was a bit wary. In fact, I ran into Daniel Hulter before, as we were both in the same Wing. He was a part of an innovation newsletter effort that I wanted to write for (but never did). I quickly heard of his organization called Agitare, who was trying to do what my wing was doing but for a much wider audience.

You might think, based on my current affiliation, that I was on board with the organization immediately. But I wasn’t. I actually had a chance to be a part of Agitare much sooner than I did, but decided not to at the time. You see, I have a certain hesitance to lauded intellectuals; I find that many of them have a certain ego about them that I can’t stand to be around. I projected those ideas on Daniel for a while, but reading his writing got me believing he wasn’t a high-ego driven individual but someone who cared about the people first. He seemed to be someone I could actually get along with. As I’ve now come to realize, I have a lot in common with. Even in sharing a draft of this article with him, I’m reminded why I joined Agitare. There aren’t many people in my life outside of my immediate family that I could be honest and say, “you know, I thought you were some ego maniac based on what I was hearing about you”, and the response be that he was “excited and nervous” to be a part of this narrative. Genuine people are hard to come by. 

Wrapping up

I have found a gold that I didn’t know I was looking for in both friendship with the people in the Agitare community and innovation sphere, and in a skillset that has fundamentally altered my future. Human centered design has become my reason for work. I want to use it in every context I can to make the lives of Airmen better.

How do you get more diverse Airmen into innovation spaces? There's no easy answer, of course, but the closest I have to an answer is to meet people where they are. My recommendation is to make a deliberate effort to engage with people who are in the so-called minority, to see them as full, complicated individuals each with their own stories and myths behind them, and to find ways to bridge your organization out to them. Of course it can't stop there, the culture which generated such a non-diverse ecosystem is still heavily at play. Without a certain vigilance about these matters, the system will easily revert back to what it's used to. To paraphrase another one of Rory's works one final time, sensitivity is the first stage of vigilance.

Will you be met with skepticism by doing this approach? Certainly. Will it, when done from a place of genuine care and concern win out in the end? I have no choice but to believe that it will.