Humbled

We’ve wondered, Kim and I, about what this time of Coronavirus has revealed. The best of our innate human nature it seems – compassionate and selfless leadership, adaptable, real togetherness and a sense of community. Sharing fruit with the neighbours, checking in with others to see if they are really OK, doing stuff for each other.  It’s been reassuring, perhaps unsurprising, to see these in ourselves. In our difficulties, a great reminder of the best of our humanity.  It would have been surprising had these qualities not come to the fore here in Aotearoa.  Despite our troubles, we’ve been warmed by what is wonderful and comes naturally from our collective human spirit. And we are lucky: we have had a little time to prepare and the resources to weather such storms, for now anyway.

What has surprised us though, 

is this sudden exposure of frailty and exhaustion.

We’ve often noticed the busy, yet fragile, nature of living in this world of our own making. Feeling the fine line between order and chaos. That once rock star economy, as well as our most vulnerable, have been laid low by this invisible Nature, a novel virus. What once seemed robust, immutable, permanent, now cruelly exposed. A global economic engine now becoming the vector for global infection. Fear and anxiety displacing hubris. As always, this will pass. We will recover, as we always seem to do. Even if, this time, the economic damage may take generations to repay, we’re told. 

We’re a pretty positive species, we reckon. 

 We do get over the bad times, though. And, as the Guardian newspaper reports ‘the biggest economic slump in 300 years’ – this is a pretty bad time. Even though in this time of human retreat we have both been delighted by somewhat of a recovery for the natural world.  But our faiths tell us it’s always darkest before the dawn, don’t they? Things will work out. Every dark cloud has its silver lining. But we wonder about the shadow side of such relentless positivity. Seeing ourselves as more ‘bullet-proof’ perhaps. When the vest might be more ‘string’ than ‘bullet’. Ignoring the warning signs for a happier sense of false security. Optimism exaggerating our sense of capacity to deal with the uncertain, the complex, the unexpected and the inevitable – when or if they come. Working on some kind of just-in-time crisis management strategy, when the time for time might itself be running out.  Or maybe we see but don’t know what to do.

What are we missing?

We have been disheartened to see what some are making of these viral times. Seeing this corona in ‘isolation’. An immediate challenge to meet and resolve. Missing the bigger pattern. Before Covid, Zika. Before Zika, MERS. Before MERS, SARS and Bird flu and HIV and Ebola. Not forgetting Nipah, Hantavirus, Marburg and Mapucho. Inhaling only this terrifying economic cost and urging us back to ‘before’. Resuscitating our BAU. Their only prescription, to double down on extracting and acquiring to pay off this now trillion-dollar credit card bill.  More of the same. Perhaps missing the deeper lessons.

While we are encouraged by others trying to make a deeper sense of these times  - Charles Eisenstein’s ‘Coronation’, Rebecca Solnit’s ‘The Impossible has already Happened’, David Quammen’s ‘Shaking the Viral Tree’, Hala Alyan’s ‘This is not a Rehearsal’ and Alexander Beiner’s ‘What Myth can Teach us’ - to name a few. Shining a light on some uncomfortable mental models, that create the conditions for such catastrophe - denial, greed, and independency.

‘Tomorrow will be the same, but not as this is’

Colin McCahon

Bernie and I, are returning now, somewhat unconsciously, to booking travel, setting up meetings, getting back to our working life, as we knew it. We have noticed our dis-ease with old habits. Much will, of course, be the same, and much may never be. We want to stand in that ground between the old and the new. Working the space between what’s fading and what’s emerging. Trying to make some insightful sense of our connections to the past, while charting paths into the unknown territory of the future. We think that we are all being asked to pay closer attention, ask better questions, be patient and humble and most of all be fluid and responsive to what may come. To tread more tentatively, fully aware of our own limitations and the often invisibility of consequences. And lets be more cautiously positive.

Trying our best not to predict, provide advice, a model, or a framework for best practice. And, to take the time to understand whatever future comes, as it emerges, rather than through the ‘lens’ and expectations of the past.

 No one really knows what will happen from here. 

 Kim and Bernie