My leadership values

Five stories of typographic, geometric, and illustrative tattoos

Sep 19, 2024

I have many different categories of words I’ve collected over the yeras. Untranslatable. Extremely specific. Names for Things. The most intimate I’ve collected on my skin.

My tattoo have through-threads, parably weaving together words, language, design, and nature.

I’m currently reflecting on values as part of the weekly assignment for Active Voice’s Power Shift Leadership Accelerator, led by

Sara Wachter-Boettcher

and

Jen Dionisio

What started as a looking back on past-Jonathan’s like-lists, turned more inwards and took a look at myself. I’ve been meaning to do a write-up about my tattoos for a while, with story. I had never found the right fit or structure.

This ended being that emergent moment.

An Aside
Emergent Moment
Definition

Something that happens at the right moment, in the right mindset, with the right framing. It’s that moment when you figure out what a brainstorm really means—lightning leaving its thunderous wake of ideas, connections, and possibilities. It’s that click into place moment where all the work before made sense, but now you see an even bigger picture.

I did my typical quick definition search for phrases I write and didn’t find this, so I thought I’d might as well define it.

This ended up being an emergent moment.

Below are what I consider foundational values. If they meant enough to get tattooed onto myself, they damn well should have meant something important to me.

And, they do.

Authenticity
Curiosity
Tenacity
Collaboration

Authenticity

My first tattoo reads “esse quam videri.”

I got it after I received my first paycheck, from my first job after graduating University. I had moved into the first apartment where I lived on my own, for the first time ever. I was in a new town, new scene, in a new profession.

It’s the motto of North Carolina, “to be, rather than to seem.” It was adapted as the North Carolina State motto in 1893 quoted from Cicero’s essay on Friendship.1

Curiosity

My fourth tattoo reads “luister.”

I got it after my first year as a director. It was a year of learning to listen; to listen in more broad and in depth ways than I ever had before. Luister is the Dutch imperative form of to listen. Conjugatedly, it reads, “Listen!” The fact that there’s the surprise tie-in to Link’s wayfinding companion, Navi, from the Ocarina of Time is just a happy, much later recognized, bonus.

For me, listening is rooted in curiosity. Intentional, purposefully cultivated curiosity in my own bodymind, in the world, and in the people I’m working with.

The world becomes a far more interesting and exciting place when moving from a foundational curiosity in it.

Tenacity

My fifth tattoo is of a Miami Blue butterfly.

I got it with my sister as a brother-sister shared tattoo, and with her as her first. She has her own reasons for the butterfly. For me, I chose this one specifically as the photo reference to give to the artist.

“I don’t know if it’s because of Jurassic Park or what, but people think you can just put a species back out there and it’ll be fine,” says Cabrera (pictured). Photograph Karuna Eberl. Source: Atlas Obscura

The Miami Blue butterfly is a tiny, tiny butterfly who’s natural habitat is a 700 miles (1,127 kilometers) along Florida coastlines. Their favorite habitat is literally the space between the ocean and the inland plants—where humans like to build beach front properties and sunbathe.

Interestingly…they’ve come back from extinction twice.

First declared extinct in 1992 after a decade of beach development and Hurricane Andrew came through.

In 1999 they became unextinct when a citizen-scientist found them. Then, by 2010—extinct again. Rebuilding the population didn’t pan out.

They were unextincted again, in the late 2010’s, when some were found in Florida’s more remote islands. They are one of the world’s longest running insect conservation programs in the world. 2

Tenacious little buggers.

Collaboration

My third tattoo is of a 5 × 9mm (0.2 × .35in) geometric image that creates all the letters of the Latin alphabet—A–Z—and numbers—0–9.

I got it the week my brother got married.

From these thirty-six typographic characters, worlds are created.

Humans are able to talk to each other across time. We’re able to learn from each other and have countless examples of building things that use them to create with humans from hundreds of years ago, like Catalan Antoni Gaudí and his Sagrada Família.

In this little image, everything I’ve ever written, learned, listened to, or said can likely be created from this simple type set.

If you want an inspiration for collaboration—I find the intersection letters, language, and time travel up for the job.

500 Characters

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