We Were Made For This
As the inaugural post for my recently launched consulting business, First Generation Advisors, I had all kinds of designs for topics and discussions relative to business and growth strategy as part of my business rollout. As fate would have it however, the WHO announced Covid-19 as a global pandemic the day after I formally registered my business entity. This wasn’t how I thought it would go. But then again, me and about nine billion others have come to the same conclusion. This is not how we thought it would go.
In as much, the repetition of the daily headlines of the Covid-19 pandemic and the reeling global economies reminded me of a refrain my mom used to say when I was struggling with some event. You are not in control of most of what happens in your life. And while there is some measure of relief in hearing myself repeat her words, as in, I couldn't have seen this black swan coming, it is not a complete antidote for the early morning doubts, obsessing on how this is all going to turn out and more presently, how do I turn myself into a Zoom Master?!
Frodo: “I wish none of this had happened.”
Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Further, more than at any other point in my life, as I am discussing the current events with my adult children, I find myself wondering how any of what I have experienced can be guidance in the face this global predicament. While I have experienced three recessions in my adult career (1990, 2001, 2007), none have posed the chasm we now face in trying to get this economy moving again in the face of real and tragic circumstances. And yet, upon further reflection, I find I don’t need to look much beyond my own family’s history to illustrate one undeniable fact. I am here. You are here. We are here. And that fact is the result of those that came before us that also faced seemingly insurmountable odds and calamities in their lifetimes. And yet they persisted, they survived, and I daresay they thrived.
In my family’s case, my dad was born in 1914, survived the last global pandemic of 1918 as a young toddler, lived through the Great Depression as a high school kid, served in WWII and then lived a full life until the age of 88. Equally, my mom would survive tales of repeated hardship. Born in a dirt-floored shack in Ponce, Puerto Rico, she endured extreme poverty growing up, moved to New York after high school speaking only Spanish, taught herself English by listening to the radio, was widowed and subsequently became a single mother of two young mixed-race boys in the harsh racial realities of 1950’s New York City. Along with countless other obstacles she persevered and lived into her early 70’s.
My point in sharing their stories is that every family has history somewhere in it’s past that tells the tale of overcoming great obstacles. The challenge for us is in the present moment is it is too easy to overlook them and obsess about what we are dealing with today. And yet the stories of perseverance and renewal are there for the asking. Whether in your own family’s stories or someone else’s, we need but only remind ourselves that the stories of overcoming adversity are the reassurances we need to lean on in these times.
“These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life that, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant wake into life to form the character of the hero and the statesman.”
- Abbigail Adams letter to John Quincy Adams
All of which underscores the infallible truth that we were made for this. Humanity was made for dealing with struggle and adversity. And while the consequences of events can be messy, or even tragic, we prevail. The record of human history assures us this.
For my part, it is what keeps me looking to the future and stokes my motivation to adapt and thrive. I hope it does for you as well. Our future depends on it.
