This is a deeply uncertain time. Many people are reaching out through whatever tools they have at their disposal to make a human to human connection, to share their thoughts, to raise their voice, to feel less alone, less scared.
I’ve been struggling with my own uncertainties, and my own perceptions of how I “should” be in this time. While I’m not an academic, this article by Aisha S. Ahmad in particular helped me name and tame some of what I’ve been going through - I highly recommend reading the whole thing, as I reference some of it below.
What I want to say here, though, is something a little different. I want to share my hope for the world, especially the world of business and technology that I inhabit as a worker.
Which boils down to this: Take this time.
Over the past 10 - 20 years, it’s felt like our world just kept going faster and faster, with demands for productivity to always increase, always be on, working on a never-resting global schedule. Gogogogogogogo.
Until now.
Now many of us are at least on pause, if not stopped completely. Or part of our lives are waiting for resolution while others feel like they’re trying to push forward at the pre-pandemic pace.
What if, instead of trying to soldier through as if everything is normal, or as if everything is going to return to what normal used to be, we take this time to feel, be, think? So that when a new normal arrives, we can be intentional about where we go, what we do, and how we do it.
Right now, we should focus on helping our human systems, because those are the foundation of everything else. And those are the ones that are hurting the most. Start with yourself, and your family, blood or created. Are you safe? Are they safe? Do what you can to get to that sense of safety. Then, it’s your work family. Same thing - how safe are they feeling right now? And remember, safety manifests in a lot of different areas of our lives; there’s physical safety, psychological safety, food safety, housing safety … Then extend that to customers and clients - how can you help them feel safe? (Again, Aisha S. Ahmad says this way better than I do … )
This process takes time. We’re humans - we cling to fear, we magnify fear, and it takes time for us to crawl out of that hole. We all do it at different rates. Some of us are forced out of it too soon because our work calls us to put others before ourselves. The physical and psychological costs for those on the front line will be immense, and they will need our support now and into the future. Respect that. But also try to understand that some people won’t be able to move as quickly, and respect that too.
This virus moves at its own pace and right now we cannot affect it. We can, and are, changing the pace at which it spreads, but we are not changing the pace at which it incubates, develops, and causes illness. It does not respect our need for quick resolution, our desire to move out of this space of not-knowing.
Let’s use that as a forceful reminder of all the different clocks and schedules that we do control. Let’s take this time as an opportunity to figure out what we need to be our best human selves, both in isolation and together as a network, as a community, and then start taking purposeful, intentional, mindful steps towards building those bonds.
Take. Your. Time.
(For the musical theatre inclined, I leave you with the brilliance of Jason Robert Brown’s “The Schmuel Song”.)