I have a confession to make. My writings of late have been edging toward negativity and I don't like it. It's easy to bitch in times like these, there are a lot of things to complain about. But bitching without a corresponding action towards solving the problem doesn't help. The good news for you is that I'll try extra hard to find a positive spin in all the things I want to write about from now on.
I get that, in this crisis, some people have suffered tremendous losses and it's a perfectly human behaviour to want to find a culprit to what ails us. While we can and should empathize with those that may be less fortunate, and understand that when feelings are so raw, politeness goes out the window, we also ought to be careful to not be polarizing for the sake of it.
Ultimately, the "people in charge" are under a tremendous amount of pressure and scrutiny which leads some to shine and others to crumble like a building in a landslide. While it's easy to judge them from the comfort of our well-loved couches, we're we too close to the matter to be able to form an objective and informed opinion on what went down. It's like asking a flying trapeze artist to read a Shakespeare play while they are performing at the circus, they're way to focused on the task at hand to do anything else with any hope of remaining safe in the process.
Let's leave that to tomorrow's historians who will have a treasure trove of data (a rare positive aspect of pervasive data collection) to sift through and the benefit of hindsight, to really be able to analyze and interpret what happened. In this context, paying attention to the news only aggravates the aggravation (I know, I can't help it). Ironically, I have experimented of late with looking at the news as if it were circus entertainment for the rare times I look at it, it seems to do the trick. I can have my weekly dose of google news when I'm bored and still have a good laugh without feeling the frustration building up.
In addition, there is something to the idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy in times of crisis. The more we talk and think about the worst-scenario, the more our actions will tend in to go towards actually fulfilling these predictions. There could be real-world consequences to this line of thinking on a massive scale. Now, I don't profess to know whether that's a falsifiable hypothesis, but at the very least it's an interesting thought experiment.
I do want to propose an alternative line of thinking to approach these challenges. I think it's more beneficial in the short and long term to solve real-world problems that we actually can have an effect on. By focusing on things at a smaller scale, a.k.a. getting our house in order, we can start to improve our day-to-day little by little, step by step, slowly but surely improving our own condition. There are two main benefits to this. The first one is that our lives get better and the second one, perhaps a bit less tangible is that others will start to notice changes and are likely to want that for themselves.
Leading by example is the more effective form of leadership because you show others that they have the power to better their own condition as well. That's why no one likes to be told what to do. We do it under pressure, but ultimately, if we were truly free we wouldn't do half the stuff we're asked to do.
Leading by example is how communities are formed, grow and take a life of their own. That’s why the best businesses are the ones where the owner is not needed to function properly. They contribute to something greater than themselves: culture, intrinsically intertwined with human life, yet so intangible and difficult to fully grasp.
I recently rediscovered the joy of sketching and have been sketching a little bit every day in order to develop a new habit that significantly improves my life. In less than 2 weeks, I've already thought of dozens of illustrations I want to work on. Consistency eats quality and quantity for breakfast on any given morning.
What about you? What's the one thing you've been meaning to do and yet keep putting aside in the name of "emergencies"? What would it take to turn it into a habit?
