26 March 1968. Three days old, I lay in my mother’s arms. My parents had named me Marco. I was their second child.

It soon became clear that I was having trouble feeding. I had been born with a cleft palate. The family doctor told my parents, “You’re going to have your hands full with this child. Perhaps it would be better to stop at two.”

The name my parents had chosen for me did not last. My grandmother was disappointed that I had not been named after my grandfather. And so Marco became Ard.

My new name was difficult for me to pronounce, especially at a time when a rolled r was still the norm.

I was thirteen when I got my first job, peeling flower bulbs. The farmer asked my name. I stumbled over it. He looked at me, wrote Arthur on the list, and moved on. I left it at that.

I was used to adapting. I was the child who was taken out of class for speech therapy. The child who tried to go as unnoticed as possible to avoid being bullied.

While others my age were beginning to make themselves heard and seen, I preferred to retreat into my own world. I held on to the thought that my time would come.

I became convinced that there was something wrong with me.

For years, I carried that belief with me. It shaped the way I saw myself, the way I studied and worked, and the way I related to others. I set the bar high. From the outside, there seemed to be nothing wrong with that. On the inside, it demanded more and more of me.

Much later, I came to understand that it was not the events themselves that had kept me trapped, but the story I had come to believe about myself.

We all carry stories with us. They have shaped us, but they do not have to determine who we are or what our future will be.

The stories we tell ourselves travel with us. They color the way we see ourselves, the way we meet others, and the way we respond to what happens to us. At work, too, our stories reveal themselves.

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Photo: AvO