A Weekly Pause to Move You Forward
“Not everything that is faced can be changed,
but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
- James Baldwin
One evening this week, my phone rang. My neighbor’s daughter asked me to come quickly as her mother, who is 104, had fallen.
We helped her back to her room. She was shaken, but unhurt. Afterward, her daughter showed us the things that fill their walls: portraits of Churchill, paintings of the monarchy, a photograph of their family shop in Leeds from the 1930s, horse-drawn carts outside, and no telephone poles in sight. A century of life, frozen in frames and keepsakes.
England, pre-WW2
This woman was born before World War II. Her daughter was literally delivered in an air-raid bunker during a raid. They’ve lived through alarms that truly mattered: sirens in the night, bombs overhead, years of rationing, not to mention those in the ~80 years since. And yet after her fall, this 104-year-old lady smiled and apologized for causing trouble. The crises of the past are likely the furthest thing from her mind. She just smiled and wanted to go to bed.
For whatever reason, it was a healthy dose of perspective.
The current moment presents us with no shortage of crises every day. This week, we were told that unemployment numbers are at record highs. At the same time, the world watched as Xi Jinping stood alongside Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un at a military parade in Beijing. And hovering over all of it is the debate about how artificial intelligence will reorder economies, politics, and human work in the decades ahead. I could go on, but there’s enough in the news.