Time to Rethink

Please stick with me through this post. It only begins with business and the pandemic. We have even bigger things to think about.

Much of the UK where I live is in lockdown or about to be in lockdown again. Much of the USA, where my family are, refused to go into lockdown. Now much of the USA faces a combined health and economic catastrophe that makes last winter look tame.

In the midst of all this I am looking for businesses to help, or acquire if their owners want to step out and not do the heavy lifting of getting through the pandemic. If you are familiar with my work, you know I can be clever about this (and if you’ve been in touch to ask for help, thank you).

But let’s be honest. In a Western capitalist economic system, some businesses cannot get through this. Those businesses might as well close down now. Their owners might as well find something else to do and consider restarting the shut business somewhere down the road when conditions are more favorable again. It’s terrible for the owners and their staff. But for some businesses the only real choice on the table is whether to do it voluntarily with a measure of control, or be forced into it precipitously.

All of this is happening because of a capricious virus that can be deadly or crippling to anyone at any age, and there is not yet any way of predicting which of us will get its worst instead of its mildest effects. We’re all trying to survive the pandemic.

This isn’t the first such plague humanity has faced. It won’t be the last and it isn’t the only crisis confronting us. We ought to be having two conversations about this.

Right now we are only having one, the urgent one about how to grapple with what is happening right now. People who already have experience adapting to loss and uncertainty (I’m in this group) are better prepared for it, mentally, than the rest. That means if we are struggling with the pandemic, psychologically, we should be learning from friends and family who are chronically ill or endured a severe long term illness or something comparably all-encompassing. Such experience is deeper and more personal than that of a business failure or bankruptcy.

Please understand, these immediate conversations are important. We should all be willing to engage in them and help each other find our way through the worst of this pandemic.

But we should also begin to have a second conversation about how to make our lives (families, businesses, friendships, communities, entire societies) better positioned to cope with such massive threats and upheavals. We should create the solutions we come up with, see which ones work best and spread those. Our world is heating up. Sea level is rising. Weather patterns are changing and becoming more extreme. This is already forcing large numbers of people to move, looking for a more survivable place to live, and they are only the start of a wave.

As I said a while back, looking for ways to become more resilient is in the right direction, but that word is inadequate. It’s time to reconsider practically everything. We are at a pivot point as a species. We are motivated enough now to do whatever it takes to turn ourselves for the better. So let’s start hammering out what to do.

You can’t personally fix it all, but you can make changes for whatever is within your reach. Your business or job. Your family. Your community. Your friendships. Start there. Don’t try to do it alone. We’re better off together, blending our capabilities and knowledge and perspectives.

It feels, and is, a whole lot better than sitting around waiting for someone else to do it. Let’s each gather a team around ourselves and get started.