I remember when a friend of mine bought a first-generation iPhone. It was back in 2007 when all of the worker bees will still using Blackberrys and Palm Pilots. Nobody used their phones to surf the web. Browsing the internet was available on the Blackberry but it was slow and unusable. There were no apps or App Stores and big companies didn’t even allow iPhones to be used for corporate email.

We were so attached to our Blackberrys. People had leather holsters on their belts and would walk around like gunslingers in a Western. We cherished our hard-wired QWERTY keyboards, tap tap tap…that’s how indoctrinated we were to the status quo.

I remember trying the iPhone for the first time. It was like playing with something from another planet. I bought one as soon as I could and had two phones with me until my company supported email on the iPhone and then I ditched the Blackberry forever.

I’ve heard that people who are serious about cars have the same experience with Tesla. There’s no going back.

Video conferencing services like Zoom are like Blackberry 2007. I wonder what the iPhone equivalent of video conferencing will be in 5 years’ time.

So what’s the point of this story? A lot of people accept the status quo like a shitty Blackberry, an unsatisfying job or living arrangement because they don’t know what else is out there. They won’t explore the great unknown because they don’t like how change makes them feel.

Uncertainty and stress is the tax we pay for the change. If you want to experiment with new ways of doing things or change the status quo then get ready to pay the tax. Most of the time it’s worth it!

Photo by Randy Lu on Unsplash

I wonder how all the talk show hosts, pseudo-celebrities and influencers are feeling about their new shelter in place world. Their oxygen supply is turned off. Nobody is watching them anymore.

The lockdowns have leveled the entertainment playing field. Now everyone has access to the same distribution channels. Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and WhatsApp are the platforms that entertain us. I’ve discovered so many smart, funny, crazy and thoughtful previously ‘unknown’ people who have risen to the moment to entertain and inform me.

Pre-COVID the studios had the power of high-quality production, live studio guests, the live studio audience, the field reporters and staff. That’s all changed. Now it’s about raw talent, guerrilla marketing, and community. The studios can’t give their contrived stars air cover through shock and awe promotions and prime time TV slots during the lockdown. There will be some that survive because they have raw talent like Ellen, Trevor Noah, Jimmy Kimmel, but for a lot of them it’s a bit like everyone can see that the emperor has no clothes.

We also saw some true colors of ‘TV doctors’ come out because don’t have their minders around for damage control. Foot in the mouth seems to be a common side effect of COVID. At least all of us now know that TV Doctors aren’t real doctors

Poems and art strike a different chord and are lighthouses during times of crises, change, and struggle.

IF – by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Photo by Peter Mode on Unsplash

My wife took away a valuable little tidbit after chatting to a doctor friend about the benefits of health supplements like various vitamins and Chinese herbs. 

Her friend told her that vitamins and herbs are beneficial when they show up early and often. Don’t start taking them when you are sick, take them when you are healthy, and build up a defense.

A chiropractor buddy told me the same thing. He said that most of his patients turn up at his door when they have chronic pain. The best time to treat yourself and get aligned is when you aren’t in pain or aren’t overcompensating because of an injury.

Show up early and show up often. This principle can be applied to a lot of things in life.

Friendships

Raising kids

Exercise

Healthy eating

Meditation

Saving cash

Build up reserves in all these areas, so that you have a cushion when you get knocked on the canvas. A soft cushion means you can get back up quickly, and it’s not a knock out blow when you take an uppercut out of the blue.

Photo by Baylee Gramling on Unsplash

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

How are your 2020 New Year’s resolutions doing in the COVID-19 world?

Let me guess, they went something like this:

• Join the gym/yoga studio/spin class
• Learn the guitar
• Practice a new language
• See more friends
• Spend more time with family
• Travel
• Drink less
• Eat healthily
• Less stress
• etc. etc.

Will our 2021 resolutions be different now that we’ve been reminded about the fragility of our rituals and customs.

“Man makes plans . . . and God laughs.” – Michael Chabon

Photo by ALBERT RENN on Unsplash

“We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return: we will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again.” – Queen Elizabeth, 2020

I needed this today. When someone like the Queen who saw the beginning and end of WWII offers guidance and encouragement, it’s best to be quiet and listen.

Notice the message isn’t all roses and hope. She knows from experience that there will be difficult times ahead, and the recovery will be long, but we need to endure.

Nobody likes a bridge to nowhere. Her message is the bridge we need to believe in. It’s the promise of reunification and normalcy on the other side.

Photo by Felix Bacher on Unsplash

Some of the smartest people I know are not afraid of not knowing things. Most of the time, they are never 100% certain about anything. They don’t fall into the trap of thinking they are experts in every field and will freely admit there are things they know nothing about. It’s unnerving. They ask a lot of simple questions that everyone else is afraid to ask because they might look stupid. They are comfortable in the realm of the unknown.

Learning happens when we dare to step into the realm of the unknown. By not knowing and not pretending to know, we begin to get more comfortable with feeling our way through the dark new rooms and finding the light switch.

2020 is like one big dark room. We can either curl up in a ball, or we can start slowly adjusting our eyes to the darkness and seek out the light switch We all have to get used to being frightened by the unknowns. When will this end, will it flare back up, what does a post-COVID world look like? Let’s figure it out together by asking questions and adopting the beginner mindset.

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few” ― Shunryu Suzuki

Photo by Kwame Anim on Unsplash

The World Health Organization estimates that the flu kills 290,000 to 650,000 people per year.

In the age of COVID-19, I’m surprised we tolerated this high number for an annual respiratory disease that could be suppressed with better hygiene, social distancing, mandatory vaccinations. Over the past few years, we’ve collectively shrugged and come to accept a  brutal and debilitating annual flu season. People will keep dying from the flu until we change our habits and rituals.

Once we are through COVID-19 here are a couple things we need to keep up and change:

• Stay home if you are sick. There needs to be social pressure and public shaming if someone comes to work sick.
• Wear a mask if you feel sick. You are protecting others, and it should be celebrated.
• Temperature checks in airports, malls, offices.
• Countries, where the virus is eradicated, will require vaccines as part of a travel visa approval. No vaccine, no visa.
• Disband and reboot the way we frisk and touch travelers at airports. Everything should be digital. We built security apparatuses to detect guns and bombs but have done nothing to stop the virus from boarding a plane. An anti-vaxer is far more dangerous than a purple-haired granny who sets off the metal detector.
• Offer generous sick leave benefits. Don’t work with or for people who don’t offer this as part of the employment.
• Install sanitizing stations everywhere. They need to be as ubiquitous as drinking fountains and trash cans.
• Encourage working from home.
• Stop flying so much. You don’t need to go to Hawaii every year. Instead, take a road trip and see your own backyard.
• Cut back on traveling for business. Sales meetings can be done via video conferencing.
• Stop shaking hands, hugging, and kissing when saying hello and goodbye.
• Buy locally produced food. Eating a seasonal diet will boost your immune system, strengthen your community economy, and you’ll better understand the source of what’s going into your mouth.
• The best vitamin is fitness, sunshine. Exercise every day. Reward healthy, vaccinated people with lower taxes, lower health insurance premiums, lower interest rates on their mortgages, etc.
• Roll out mandatory and trackable digital vaccine verifications.
• Attack Climate Change the same way we are attacking COVID-19. The adverse side effects of Climate Change like pollution, drought, famine, floods, fires will displace and kill more people than influenza if we don’t act now.

We don’t have to accept 650,000 people dying every year as usual. Let’s fix it.

Photo by Katee Lue on Unsplash

Today, tubes containing toothpaste are soft, malleable plastic, but it used to be in a collapsible metal tube. The kind that would ooze out when the cap was unscrewed.

My grandfather would use a piece of wire to extract every last bit from the metal tube. When the container was almost empty, he wound the bottom around a thin metal rod and then slowly rolled it up. The winding compressed the metal and squeezed out the remaining paste.

The end result was a tight roll of metal that looked like a mini-yoga mat or cigarette. Living through two World Wars and an economic depression taught him to waste nothing.

In our age of excess, people might think rolling a tube is a waste of time and roll their eyes. If something is running low, then just throw it away and order another one on Amazon.

Post COVID-19, 40 years from now, our grandchildren will shake their heads when we insist on washing hands, avoid shaking hands, keep our distance from a cough, or hide a secret stash of antibiotics under our bed.

I hope some hard-earned habits stick around this time.

Photo by Curology on Unsplash