This old curse has caught up with us. I don’t know about everyone but I feel like plugging my ears, shutting my eyes tight and yelling out a song, any song, just so as to protect myself from every piece of news that might reach me. What. Is. Happening??
I am witnessing every bit of news about the world today that manages to squeeze in through the cracks of my self-inflicted protection, sitting at the intersection of learning about values and principled leadership values that should underpin education in my classes, accompanying my son in his studies of expansionist countries and authoritarian leaders history deemed memorable and preparing to step into the unknown world of empty nesting. What better seat is there in the house?
I have no answers. Only questions. Actually, only one: what’s the use? I have become prickly even to reading, once my soothing cradle. Books reach me as either glib, too emotional, not emotional enough. I continue to love learning but I wonder what, if anything, from the passionate discussions we have today around educational leadership, inclusive practices, the impact of artificial intelligence and artificial intimacy (as Esther Perel calls it) on our present and future will in fact truly matter. Because if news reaches us, even just for a minute, we understand that today is so much about bullying into submission, the power of the richest and the loudest mouths and stronger fists and that the world is crying to us that her water is evaporating, that its animals are dying and that ice is melting. What, indeed, is the use?
I pretend that I am evolved every morning when I remember that I paid for a full year subscription at Calm. So I sit down, in a pretend meditating show: at least I sit myself with myself for ten minutes and I listen to a soothing voice and sounds of a meadow. If nothing is gained, nothing is lost either. Yesterday, the meditation guide must have picked it up from the Universe that I was worried about the value of individual action. Even within our own lives. And she ended the 10 minutes with a question: have you ever wondered about the impact of one, small, lit match in a forest fire? Hmmm … interesting point.
From the hight of my privilege, I start from the premise that life is precious to all of us. What if each of us could be a lit match. Whatever that means for each of us. Just one caveat: this is not the time for mighty deeds. I mean, unless you really hold super powers I cannot fathom right now. These are times when taking a breath, walking your dogs without your headphones and looking around in awe, choosing a recipe on Youtube instead of the Davos forum speeches and reaching out to a friend just because, might just change our world. And what is the world if not a sum of eight billion small worlds combined?
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