Personal share alert! Trigger alert!
The text deals with death and catastrophes. Please do not read if you think that might impact you negatively.
I have been thinking about this and was not sure whether I should overshare it with my professional network or simply go to therapy. :D I will write it now and might delete it later.
I have not really realised up to now how resilience can be because of unwanted learning. I rarely remember a major event in my life timeline and that tells me there is something there. Sometimes a deep sound or the smell of the cement will make me remember it.
I survived a major earthquake when I was very young with my whole family. Several people I know died in dire conditions and my mom lost all her stock and shop, a big part of her wealth. My parents wanted to remain in situ and help others so we ended up very close to major sites which were my hometown. Soon after the event, still in school we lived and went to school in tents. I was in major hardcore studying because where I grow up you enter university exams and you need to rank to get in the best ones. Me being me I studied in containers and tents and got in the first 0.07%. Processing what is that? Whoah, I am getting emotional even now. Perhaps I will stop explaining the details. Somethings are never processed.
The point was that having such a disruptive event in my life where several things were lost with a quick twerk of the earth in the middle of the night, I think I have learnt about resilience and going on. I have never feared starting anew. The safe was an illusion anyway. In business I was ending up in skunk work teams, new initiatives and there I was mostly riding the wave of the major changes. Whenever things were looking stable, I was pondering about the next and I was seeing patterns of potential futures. It was my unfair (literal! ) advantage as it was natural to me. Stability was only a point in time without change, and to keep things stable over a time period you needed to be in constant motion.
Why the need to stabilise you ask, I never know! I think humans need it we are too fragile. My plants keep on coming back every spring, mycelium gives an eff about nothing, but we have a more composed, fragile existence with boundaries.
Creating new things, and forging new paths one needs to be comfortable. To be comfortable in the unknown and whitespace comes with practice. And perhaps it does require a tremendous amount of self-belief you will figure it out. To equip yourself with this I do not think you need to go through an earthquake. If living once in disruption is a must, all of us have now been through covid so what a great opportunity of a crisis <insert irony! >
Hopefully, you are aspiring for better systems, structures, and meaningful creations too.
One thing I realise as the economy loses its perceived stability, more people are also freer to think. I am performing such privileged thinking here I know. I apologise. I do not know where it comes from as there will be situations where individuals might lose the freedom to think about their future for economical reasons, their rights being taken away or wars.
I want to create and buidl with humans who can when I still can work towards the futures we want to be in. Not the future I personally want but for everyone to have the freedom to choose. I keep thinking about this, as my mission. And I am not sure if this is a trauma response or simply it is what drives me. But for a very long moment, this is where my drive comes from. Freedom to choose, being able to create options.
I will always remember the young guy, our neighbour– perhaps 20 who lost all his family. He was away from the region so came to a nightmare of collapse. On the 5th day, the younger sister was rescued out of the 3 siblings inside. He was smiling saying that he is grateful and will make the most of the life they are given.