There’s been much written about uncertainty and embracing uncertainty over the past few years. Which is easy reading when we’re feeling pretty certain about things. It’s hard for us to wrap our head around things that are so profound yet seem so distant and intangible. This includes big earthquakes, something we keep hearing we’re overdue for on the west coast, and pandemics. We get complacent that the luxuries available to us via an app will always be there. Magically, they usually are. Until now. Until all of the restaurants and hotels close. Until we can’t go get a haircut or spa. Until we can’t go to the movies. Or a sporting event. Or anything with a group of people. Even in our own homes.
At least with a hurricane you can see it coming. You can prepare. You are warned. You could say we were warned about the virus. You could say we were warned that a pandemic could happen that would upend society as we know it. Yet most of us couldn’t see it coming. It would be too much to conceive of and absorb. And it seemed so distant. So improbable. So futuristic and so in the past.
Yet uncertainty is what we face. We don’t know when the virus will subside. We don’t know how to safely restart the economy. We don’t even know how we’ll return to work in our offices or when. That we are pretty certain of. No one has the map. The path forward is murky at best. Yet there is something besides uncertainty available to us. We have possibility. We can reimagine a different future. We can use this time to reinvent and renew.
We can use this as a catalyst for change. To change for good. To create a new way of working. To create a new way of living. Of being. Spending time in possibility is where you can find the light. Where you can escape the downward pull of the negative news cycle. Possibility doesn’t erase the reality. It doesn’t erase the hard. But it offers clues to what we can become. Where we can go.