Nothing happens for years and then everything changes in a day. Hundreds of books are written about one day. 

Brexit, Trump, 9/11, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Pearl Harbor, the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.

Nobody knows what’s coming and even if you told them they wouldn’t believe you. 

Luke 4:24 –  “Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown.

Photo by Sasha • Stories on Unsplash

The most significant loss from this virus won’t be the stock market value, jobs, or retirement accounts. That stuff is a temporary loss, and while painful and devastating – over time it’ll come back.

The most significant and irrecoverable loss will be our tribal elders who are the knowledge keepers in our communities and families. They will be the most valuable treasure we lose.

Over the coming months, a lot of older people are going to have moment when it’s touch and go for them. If they can make a life-saving shot, they’ll make it through, recover and live another day. Others won’t be so lucky.

Check on old people in your community. If you have elderly neighbors who live on their own, then knock on their door. Let them know you see them and you hear them.

I was told the story about nuns during a civil war. I couldn’t verify it. It could be a parable but it doesn’t hurt to repeat it.

Villagers were being attacked and killed in their homes by rival factions and their bodies were thrown into the river. A group of nuns living on a convent further downstream started finding bodies in the river and pulled them out and buried them. Over time the body count increased. When the numbers kept increasing the nuns stopped collecting bodies, packed their things and headed upriver to find the source and try to stop the killing.

At some point, you stop collecting bodies and you try to stop the killing.

“It is not enough to be compassionate, we must act.”
— Dalai Lama XIV

Photo by Gláuber Sampaio on Unsplash

Planning for daily life isn’t an experiment that’s carried out in a medical cleanroom where we can observe from afar and make a decision based on scenario planning and well-planned operations. The real world is messy. Dirty data, unpredictable human behavior, panic, and mutations are all vectors you can’t see coming. 

We are now at the point with Covid-19, where statistical models and algorithms don’t help anymore. They were useful in the beginning when we didn’t have a lot of information, and we needed directional guidance. The answers are now in the dirt, on the street, and in the hospital rooms. It’s time for a brute force on the ground response. We saw this approach work in China. It wasn’t pretty, and there will be lasting damage, but that’s the cost of a brute force containment approach. 

Photo by Lucas Vasques on Unsplash

The word credit comes from the Latin word credere. The English translation of credere means to trust or to believe. When the stock market is up people feel wealthy and they have faith in the future health of the economy (jobs, consulting, small business). That confidence leads to more spending, more credit lines, more cars, more conveniences and other non-essential stuff. 

When the market tanks, people get fearful and panic – they stop believing in the stock market and future prospects. They cut back on non-essential spending because they are worried about their future earning potential. They no longer borrow money from the future.

Once these superfluous expenses have gone they realize that they can live without them, and they don’t bring them back. What are you going to cut that won’t come back?

Photo by Christopher Williams on Unsplash

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Sunday afternoon, there was a break in the rain, and we needed to get out of the house. I tried to convince my son to go for a scooter around the neighborhood, but he was having none of it. The compromise was to blow some bubbles in the front garden. We ended up sitting on the garden wall overlooking the sidewalk. Every time people walked past, my son would blow a wall of bubbles in their direction. Their reactions were the same. They all cracked a smile. I saw toddlers stop and marvel, older couples jump and try to pop a bubble just above their heads, serious tri-athletes and iron men give us a wink and a smile as they ran past. A little girl walked past and giggled as she tried to pop the bubbles. After she left, my son told me that she was laughing because her bucket of joy was overflowing.

I think we filled up some buckets with joy during an uncertain and stressful time. Don’t forget to blow bubbles. People are dealing with a myriad of struggles. I often underestimate what a small, simple act can do to change their mood or snap them out of a funk.

Photo by Letizia Bordoni on Unsplash

The last two weeks have been about the US elections and the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. The new cycles sucked me in with updates, op-eds, and pontifications on Twitter. I noticed that the more I concentrated on the updates and breaking news, the fewer ideas bubbled up for me on what to write about every day. It was like a magnetic black hole for creativity. And when I did think about writing, it was all pretty dark stuff.

The other day I made a decision to step into the darkness and see what was waiting for me. As soon as I made that decision, I started writing again.

A good friend once told me that you don’t find your teacher, your teacher finds you. I think it’s the same for creativity and ideas. The ideas and topics I wanted to talk about were waiting for me, I just wasn’t ready to write about them. Now I’m ready. Sometimes you’ve got to look behind the curtain even if what you find scares you. 

 

When the pressure gets turned on lot of people will learn the following:

Relationships and loyalty are more powerful than a paper contract

Close knit networks and close friends will save you

What force majeure means for the first time in their professional careers

The bank always gets paid

Cash is king

The difference between professional investors and touristy investors

The difference between a friend and a LinkedIn connection

When the shit hits the fan, people go tribal and look out for themselves and their immediate family

The powers of non-linear growth, compounding and the definition of the parabolic growth curves.

Everybody is winging it, and you need to think for yourself and do the work

Revenue and income evaporate quickly but short term expenses are fixed

How much slack is in the rope after a 10-year bull run. Risk appetite grows slowly over time, and corrections happen overnight.

 

Being powerless will change people. Some for good and some for the bad.

Have you waited in an immigration line and hoped that the border agent is having a good day? In the back of your head, you know that the man in the blue uniform behind the plexiglass has the power to let you in or keep you out of your adopted home.

Have you stood by helplessly at 1am in the morning as doctors and nurses push past you because your wife’s placenta is detaching and your unborn son’s heartbeat is getting erratic?

Have you dressed up in blue scrubs looking like someone from Grey’s Anatomy while waiting outside the operating theater that has a family member inside and watched doctors come and go, but nobody lets you in or tells you what’s going on?

Have you sat in a small room with no windows while a nurse blandly delivers a life-changing diagnosis?

Have you visited a country where people don’t look like you, and you can’t speak their language? Where there’s a lag on everything as you wait for someone to translate what’s going on?

Unfortunately for some, the pain and humiliation of powerlessness is so bad that they become the very thing they fear. Once they find the power, they abuse it and inflict their pain and embarrassment on others.

For others, it opens their eyes to injustices and pain in the world. It builds compassion and empathy.

Powerlessness magnifies your character. Will it amplify the bad or the good?

Photo by lucas clarysse on Unsplash

I’ve had a lot of conversations with people who insist to me things are going to be fine or tell me that whatever I’m worried about is an overreaction or overzealous paranoia. I’ve heard this reaction when people talk about a medical diagnosis, financial worries, or relationship problems. Right now I hear it when we talk about the bush fires, climate change or COVID-19 coronavirus

I remind myself that a lot of the time, they are telling me what they are telling themselves. Often the truth is too scary and sad to acknowledge. It means they will have have to take action or make a move out of their comfort zones.

Photo by Geran de Klerk on Unsplash