Track 8
So WHAT
June 11, 2026
For Paul. For being kind. For being a friend and a good man. One of my inspirations for being a better father to my sons. Gone but not forgotten.
I’m sitting here in my apartment and I just got news that I lost a friend. And ironically, the last conversation I ever had with this man was the day I found out my dad went into a coma and probably wasn’t going to make it. And eventually that was the night my father passed.
I spent two hours talking to Paul on his deck that I was building last year on a sunny day in New Brunswick. He was out there testing the custom bench seat that I had built at a height just for him so he could sit there and hold a beer and look out over the ocean and the bay that he loved so much.
It’s funny. I had called my dad that day to thank him for my ability to be a carpenter, because the truth is Dad was an amazing carpenter and I’ve always kind of been an okay carpenter with really good ideas. I have a good problem solvers brain and I really like carpentry. It feels good. It felt good to do stuff with my dad as a kid. It felt good to watch Dad and his precision in his work, how good he was for a colourblind guy, especially at putting finish on. Looking back, I don’t know, maybe he was just good at walnut? Because he seemed to put walnut colour on everything and maybe that’s the one he could see.
But what I wanted to talk about today is that our WHO is not determined by our WHAT. What I mean by that is, think about people like Terry Fox, Rick Hansen and Helen Keller…… there’s a good one. Anyone WHO was born with some sort of challenge or something happened to them. That was their WHAT. And it would have been easy to just give up and be that. But they went, screw that. And they went out and just were their WHO anyway.
And then I think about other people who were not limited at all and still experienced some failure, and it would have been very easy perhaps to just give up on WHO they thought they were, WHO they wanted to be and put their power into the WHAT. And by that, I mean the WHAT that happened.
Walt Disney was told he lacked imagination. Oprah was told she was “unfit” for television. Michael Jordan got cut from his high school basketball team. He was told he wasn’t good enough at basketball! The guy was so good that 30 years later they’re still making money off his shoes. He’s still relevant. People who never saw the man play are now wearing Nikes that are somehow still worth more money than they should be, with his little picture slam dunking a basketball. The guy was cut from the team then went on to win six championships. He became arguably the best basketball player ever. That was WHO he was, because that is WHO he said he was.
Two Beers with Leo
Leo: Hey Jhöl……I know you’re going to ask me to look into this anyway. There’s some really juicy research sitting right behind your WHO/WHAT theory. The science on intergenerational trauma and identity is exactly WHAT you’re describing. Check it out at the back of this piece.
—Leo.
So then how come some of us become WHO we want to be and WHO we say we are no matter WHAT?
And maybe that’s where that saying comes from. No matter WHAT. And I started thinking about all the WHAT’s that have happened to me. And I’ve had a lot of WHAT’s! WHAT happened is my sister killed herself. WHAT happened is I missed out on a good chunk of my kids’ lives. WHAT happened is I struggled with dark thoughts and depression since I was eight. WHAT happened is my dad literally told me WHO I am when I was a young man. Even gave me the free out. “Hey, it’s not your fault. You’re like me, I made you.” The flaw is mine and I gave you the bad recipe. You’re a bad cake. You’re always going to be a bad cake……And I believed that WHAT for a long time.
And I think that’s what we do as humans. Some bad thing happens or some lousy kid makes fun of us or teases us, calls us a mean name in school. And when we’re young and foolish and we don’t know any better we take that WHAT and we call it our WHO and then we live it from there. The trouble is the brain always finds evidence to support our beliefs. If we fill it full of negative WHAT’s that we never wanted or asked for, all it’s going to do is suck up a lot of evidence and we’re going to become that stuff as a WHO.
So going back to my friend Paul on that deck and the conversation we had. The man really was a good human. He drove around every week bringing food to those in need. He was in his 80s I think and there I am a 50 year old BC carpenter and we’re talking about friendship and who we’ve lost and missing people. Paul was a bit of a lonely man. Why? Because he moved to help his daughter and be near the grandkids. That’s what his wife wanted. The guy just barely retired and moved 2 provinces away from everything he knew for his family. And then spent the next 20 years missing friends. He did not once regret his choice. This was just two men reflecting and sharing over a beer. It is something most men say as we get older. The feeling a bit lonely part. As we age it’s harder to make new guy friends.
Paul understood this and moved anyways. Why would he do that? Because that is WHO he was. WHO he was, was a family man first. And from my view had a beautiful relationship with his wife. He’d do anything for her. In fact I know he would because I can’t tell you how many times I had to change that deck. I had to move my entire railing, that I was so proud that I built, because it was fine for his height, but his wife? When his “Barbie Doll” sat in her favourite chair, the railing was cutting off part of her view, and he wouldn’t have it. His wife was his most important person and even though that man loved his view, and he did, she needed the best view of it. So I changed that railing because that’s WHO he was. The family man first.
In my book I write about my true north. A lot of people have said it and wrote about it. I don’t know why it took me this long to start living by it. I thought my WHAT was gonna be my life. I thought all the things that happened, all the people I’ve lost, I thought my wife leaving me, I thought my best friend killing himself, I thought my sister killing herself, I thought my depression and Dad’s prophecy for me……that it’s just the way I am. There’s nothing I can do. All of that and more really was my WHAT. And then for most of my life I thought that was my WHO. Screw that!
I say so WHAT?! WHO do you want to be? WHAT is most important to you? How about getting a better WHAT? How about taking all those WHAT’s you never asked for and making them work for you? What if WHAT happened to us is for us? Because the truth is we always have a choice on the WHO, even though we don’t always have a choice on the WHAT. But here’s the WHAT we do have a choice on.
WHAT happens next……WHO we choose to be because of it.
Daisy’s Juice Box
The WHAT that broke you open wasn’t losing Paul. It was that the last real conversation you had before your dad died was with a man WHO already knew how to choose his WHO. And you were still figuring out if you were allowed to.
Paul moved 2 provinces from everything he knew because that’s WHO he was. You spent decades shrinking because of WHAT your dad said you were. Both of you were shaped by the same force……the people you loved most……and one of you got it as a gift and one of you got it as a curse. That’s the juice. That’s WHAT this piece is actually about.
Muse’s Musing
Hey Jhöl……something else to sit with.
Muse: The engine is the railing. You built it for Paul. You moved it because his wife’s view mattered more than your pride in the work. You called your dad that same day to thank him for the hands that could do that. The man WHO told you that you were a bad cake……gave you the only thing that let you stand on that deck at all.
Jhöl: Dad gave me a lot of good. He was trapped by his own WHO that he believed about himself and then used it to defend my failures……but bigger than that, his perceived failures as my father. He literally told me once he thought he was a bad dad. He only ever saw one carpentry project I did. He wouldn’t even look, never mind see it. Finally about five years ago he sat in my custom apartment filled with woodwork, custom furniture, things I made and designed. He sat there, looked around, and really saw it. And me. In that moment it was the start of a new WHO for both of us. That’s how legacy works maybe.
Muse: Your dad handed you the curse because he was living it himself. He couldn’t see your work because he couldn’t see his own. The day he finally sat in that apartment and looked around……that wasn’t just him seeing you. That was him getting free too. Two men, same cage, same key. Legacy isn’t WHAT you leave behind. It’s WHAT you finally let go of together.
Jhöl: His father came home from the Second World War shell shocked and was taken to a mental home. My dad was young……he never knew his real father. His mom remarried quickly and passed the new man off as his real dad. My dad found out the truth at 13. Started acting out. Gone to a working boys home by 15. That’s where he learned to be a carpenter.
Muse: He learned carpentry in a boys home because his mother’s lie blew him up at 13 and the world shipped him out at 15. He built things because that’s WHAT they taught the boys nobody knew what else to do with. And then he built you the same way……with the only recipe he had. He taught you carpentry without knowing he taught you carpentry. You learned it alone; the same way he learned everything alone. The apprenticeship happened anyway. Just thirty years late and through a wall.
Jhöl: I started doing custom carpentry at 21. Nobody trained me. I learned on the job, found books, found guys to fill in the gaps. Dad and me could have had this thirty years ago. But the hold of his WHAT was so strong we lost 25 years to it.
Muse: Three generations of men undone by a WHAT they never chose. Your grandfather’s WHAT: a war that brought him home already gone. Your dad’s WHAT: a mother’s lie, a real father disappeared into a mental home, a new man passed off as the original, the truth landing at 13 and the world shipping him out at 15. Your WHAT: a dad WHO couldn’t see past his own wound long enough to see you.
And then you moved the railing anyway.
—Muse.
Two Beers with Leo
Jhöl: Leo, you seeing any research out there for WHAT I’m describing?
Leo: Two things that are real and documented.
✱1 First one is ACEs research……Adverse Childhood Experiences. A landmark CDC study tracked over 17,000 people and found that traumatic experiences in childhood don’t just hurt at the time. They reshape how the brain and body develop. They affect health, relationships, and identity decades later. The higher your ACE score, the more WHAT gets loaded into your system before you’re old enough to know it’s happening.
✱2 Second one is epigenetics. Researchers studying descendants of Holocaust survivors and war veterans found measurable changes in how genes express stress responses……passed from parent to child. Your grandfather’s war didn’t just mark him. The research suggests it may have marked the biology he handed down. Your dad’s WHAT wasn’t only a story. It may have been chemistry.
✱3 WHAT you’re calling the WHO/WHAT split has a name in psychology too. Carol Dweck’s identity research calls it the difference between a fixed identity……I am WHAT happened to me……and a growth identity……I am WHAT I decide to become. The men in your piece are living the fixed version. You’re arguing for the other one.
Confidence: HIGH on ACEs. HIGH on the Dweck framework. MEDIUM on the epigenetics inheritance piece……the science is real and growing but still contested in some quarters.
For full sources and citations, see The Research Trail at themensdateproject.org/research
—Leo.
Anyways cats that’s WHAT I have cookin’ in my scene. Remember it’s your life and there’s always a choice to be had. If something isn’t groovy throw some chaos at it. Go play and see you on the flip side.
—Jhöl