You never know your friends from your enemies until the ice breaks.
-Eskimo proverb
I keep coming back to that line. Not because it’s clever, it isn’t trying to be, but because it’s true in a way most business advice isn’t.
I’ve built and rebuilt enough, companies, a farm, my career, a life, to know that the people who show up when things are calm tell you very little. Calm is easy. Calm doesn’t cost anyone anything. It’s the break that tells the truth: who stays, who helps you find footing, and who was only ever there for the smooth surface.
My story has more than one chapter where the ice broke. Some people I expected to stay didn’t. Some I barely knew showed up and never left. I didn’t get to choose which was which in advance; nobody does. You just find out, and then you build from what’s actually true instead of what you hoped was true.
That’s part of why the Archives matter to me, and why this next chapter does too. Not to keep score, but to remember clearly, who the ice tested, and who it proved.
If you’re standing on ice right now, wondering whether it’ll hold: you’ll know soon enough. Build the kind of relationships, and the kind of work, that don’t need calm water to prove they’re real.
-Jeff