When things get a bit crazy, I think about the Redwood Groves just north of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. There’s a grove of trees just outside of Mill Valley that I sometimes go to in my mind. If I stand in the middle and look up at the branches above, they form a roof that looks just like a cathedral ceiling. It’s the right place to ground myself and settle down. 

The tree rings of Redwoods that have been standing for hundreds of years tell us stories about climate change, drought, floods, and other significant changes to the earth. For years everything is normal, and then there’s an event that causes changes in the flow. 2020 is a year that our human tree of civilization will see a bump in the ring. I wonder what the future patterns will look like after that. 

My kids get agitated if I check my phone when I’m spending time with them. They’ll try and grab my phone and do other naughty things to distract me. My solution is to put the phone in another room and keep it away from all of us so I won’t be tempted.

Yesterday evening I was cleaning up the back garden. Raking leaves, sweeping away dirt and pulling weeds out of the gaps between the paving. It was pretty therapeutic work, I got some fresh air at the end of the day and helped me decompress after sitting behind a screen. I noticed that my kids were soon outside with me playing quietly together and not asking for my attention. They do the same thing if we go to the park on a Sunday afternoon and I bring a ball along to play some solo basketball. If I take my phone out, then their mood changes immediately. I think both gardening and basketball is about being with them in the moment and being present. They get it, and they give me space.

It’s a delicate balance sometimes. The kids get to pass the time with me, and I get to relax and decompress. The silent truce is that there’s no phone!

Photo by Kilyan Sockalingum on Unsplash

Do not go gentle into that good night 

Dylan Thomas – 1914-1953

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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.