The Call to Action That Will Not Be Ignored
“Where a finite-minded player fears things that are new or disruptive, the infinite-minded player revels in them.”
We are in the midst of an inflection point in human history, one of those rare periods where there's a clear demarcation between the old way and whatever is coming next.
I first got a whiff of the magnitude of the disruption we'd soon be facing on 11 March 2020 when the NBA game between the Utah Jazz and Oklahoma City Thunder was cancelled just before tipoff (the players were already on the court warming up) because one of the Jazz players had tested positive for coronavirus. The league announced the suspension of the season the following day. The NBA was an 8.6 billion dollar business in 2019; this was not a decision that was taken lightly.
We all know what happened in the following weeks. The threat of viral contagion sent over half of humanity to seek shelter in their homes, brought the massive gears of global commerce to a grinding halt and threatened to change our lives forever (gone: handshakes and cash; here to stay or coming soon: masks, working from home and "immuno-passports").
Many of us, no matter who we were pre-plague, no matter how famous or rich or esteemed, now find ourselves grappling with the most basic of human needs: safety and security. Overnight we've had to grapple with the realization that the world we live in is not at all the world we thought it was. We've been taught, quite swiftly and mercilessly, that nothing is guaranteed: not our jobs, not our health and old age, not the freedom to go where we want whenever we want, not even the supply chain of the most prosperous country in the world.
Because the disruption descended upon us with such speed and ferocity many of us simply watched, in disbelief, as the world outside our quarantine window began to wobble on its axis. We held onto denial like a buoy, wanting so badly to believe that this would blow over quickly, that a vaccine would miraculously appear, that someone would come to our rescue, that life would soon return to normal.
It was less than two months ago, on 22 March, that Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York (where I live), signed his executive order mandating that all non-essential business close and banning all non-essential gatherings of individuals of any size, for any reason. At that time there were 7,102 coronavirus cases and 35 deaths in New York State; as of today (13 May 2020), there are 343,705 cases and, tragically, 27,284 deaths, every one of them someone's father or brother, mother or sister, son or daughter. In the US, the count of cases went from a single case to one million cases in 100 days.
The sheer scale and the global reach of the disruption served, for most of us, to loosen our grip on denial pretty quickly. Some of us made our way (or are still making our way) through the subsequent stages of grief in Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's 5 stage model of grief, with often lengthy pit-stops at anger, bargaining and depression, before finally, hopefully, glimpsing the light at the end of the tunnel: acceptance.
But acceptance, for those lucky enough to have arrived there, doesn't go far enough. Acceptance is essentially a passive act; we're compelled to accept this new normal as our current and near-future operating reality for lack of any other credible alternative. Finally, after venting our anger and railing at the spiteful gods, after haplessly assigning blame and wallowing in impotent self-pity, we relax into an acceptance of our new reality. But that doesn't mean we truly embrace it.
Embracing the new normal goes beyond acceptance and actively engages with it to create meaning from the rubble. In his book, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief, David Kessler extends Kubler-Ross's model with a sixth stage, meaning. With this profound addition to our understanding of and reckoning with grief, Kessler tells us that stopping at acceptance doesn't honor the gravity of of the loss. It's in this sixth stage that the healing and the growth reside. "Loss is simply what happens to you in life, Kessler writes. "Meaning is what you make happen."
“When something bad happens you have three choices. You can either let it define you, let it destroy you, or you can let it strengthen you.”
There's no denying that bad things are happening. People are dying. In the US alone over thirty million people (and counting) have lost their livelihoods, many have lost close friends or family members to the virus and have been unable to grieve properly, all are feeling the loss of the freedoms they once took for granted: to go out to dinner and a movie; to visit with friends and family; to date and travel and walk in the park.
But many of us are putting this disruption to good use. We're enjoying nightly dinners with family (even teenagers). We've discovered space to start or finish long-deferred projects. We've taken the opportunity to reorient priorities, to reach out to long-lost friends, and, if necessary, make amends. We're coming to realize how interdependent we are.
We're making lemonade from lemons.
We cannot know what's going to happen next. No one can. Any control we think we have over what comes next is a delusion, one which does us a disservice by distracting us from awakening to what we must do next, to how we'll grow into who we will become as the new normal takes shape.
Maybe you've already lived through other calls to action, times when the veil was at least temporarily lifted and things came into focus. An illness or a failed relationship, the death of a loved one or a career that led you to dead end after decades of toil. And maybe you succeeded in ignoring this call to action and returned to your status quo, whatever that was, pretending like it never happened.
Well, this is the call to action that will not be ignored. The path back to the way things used to be is blocked; the boats have been burned. Many things we took for granted will never be the same. There will be no return to normal.
But where some lament this reality others rejoice. There were many things that were untenable about the pre-plague status quo. Rampant inequality, the destruction of the natural world, unsustainable climate change, greed and intractible partisan politics.
We have the chance to do better. We can do better. We must do better.
The question, then, is not what's going to happen next, it's what will you do next.
What part will you play in building a new and better future?