Exploring that space between memories and the stories we create allows us to emerge as the leaders we were born to be. My journey as a leader has taught me that my childhood demanded a hypervigilance and that, to stay safe, I learned to work ceaselessly to try to make sense of the world (even as I was confronted with insensible acts and facts). As part of that effort, I listened closely—collecting and holding the stories of those around me as clues to a puzzling life.

The result is that I often see, hear, sense things that others miss. This can be a source of great wisdom. But this sensing can be an impediment to my peace of mind as well, for I can create whole ships of fiction out of the random flotsam and jetsam that float my way. Still, when I sit well and quietly, I can see a way through the puzzle, especially when another is blocked. I laugh as I recall that one of my favorite childhood pastimes was completing books of mazes. I like working my way out of mazes; I am good at it.

Over the coming weeks, we’d talk about what was happening to me. Being there but not really being there. Living a life of there-but-not-there hurt like hell.

Writing,’ notes the poet Terry Tempest Williams, ‘requires an aching curiosity leading you to discover, uncover, what is gnawing at your bones.

Such remembering, the late poet John O’Donohue reminds us, is an essential element of adult leadership. ‘When someone fails or disappoints you,’ he writes, ‘May the graciousness with which you engage / Be their stairway to renewal and refinement.

Here’s to the imperfection of memory. Here’s to the way we ‘fiction and fable our lives,’ as the poet Pádraig Ó Tuama, says, ‘in order to tell of things that are more than true.