A Letter For Jeff Hullinger
My friend and an Inspiration
Last spring, on a beautiful but crisp Saturday morning in Salt Lake City, my son and I set off to a soccer scrimmage. Once you’re a middle aged parent with a kid playing soccer these mornings are really prime social time with other parents on the team.
I’m not a very social person naturally, I’m much more of an introvert, and the activities it takes to be social like planning, comms, and coming up with ideas to gather aren’t my strengths. So these are nice occasions for me, all of that stuff is done for me!
My friend Jeff is one of the parents I’ve grown close to over the last few years. He and his wife Leah (also a gem 💎 in her own right) are salt of the earth, fun, interesting, and adventurous people.
Well on this nice Saturday morning Jeff and I got to talking and I asked if we could walk around the field and chat. He graciously complied and as we walked through the overgrown grass and talked I told him about this project.
I told him how enlightening it had become to sit down and think deeply about other people and influences in my life. How it had became self reflective and therapeutic. How it led me to examining my own relationships and how I brought myself to them.
Then that magical thing happened when you share and open up yourself, it creates a space for the other person to step into and bring that same energy into it.
We had such a beautiful and genuine conversation. Both expressing things we hadn’t really shared with anyone else.
That’s when I knew this project had real legs, it was going somewhere. Until that moment it was sort of a closeted exercise that I’d kept to myself and the few people I’d collaborated with. Now it had life.
It was the moment I needed to realize that it was going to resonate with others. That it had the ability to add value, to provide a new lens or energy or inspiration.
In fact, a couple days later Jeff called me and said he’d resonated with it so much that he wanted to write a letter to an old friend of his that he wanted to thanks and give gratitude to.
It gave me a new goal for the project that I’m going to carry through everything that I do:
Can I help others learn and practice doing this same thing?
Jeff gave me this gift of a goal.
He’s also given me brotherhood and trust and his own vulnerability. The good stuff.
For that I thank him, I’m so grateful.
With love and deep appreciation,
-Andrew
PS: Jeff is much more brave than I am, he does stuff like this: