Adaptation
Dear friend,
You can learn to adapt to almost any change in circumstances, eventually. I’m pondering a question that’s ‘on the cards’—
“What’s normal now that would’ve seemed strange 50 years ago?”
Zara’s dozing after her dinner, chin on paw, and the heating has clicked on. Pipes vibrating to the sound of hot rushing water. I ask myself the question again and something swims up.
There are so many things to choose from, but it’s a personal thing that floats into view.
I was six years old fifty years ago. Technology is a big one, but really—my six-year-old self had not yet even lost a pet. Death was not in the world.
What’s normal now is that everyone except my brother and my Auntie Jean, who made up the fabric of my world, they are all no longer living. Everyone leaves you in the end, they say, and yet slowly over time, as the rawness recedes, they return as a smile and a tear of sunshine.
A daffodil’s trumpet or the twitch of a robin’s brown wings.
But we oughtn’t put too much energy into adapting to corrupt and unsustainable systems with their stories of separation and conflict.
Better we come home and rest and connect.
Tell new stories and adapt to them.
The worlds we create.
I was reading Hetty Einzig today, she starts her collection of essays on the future of coaching with a quote and a story.
Throwing our caps over.
Adapting to whatever comes.
However many decades we’ve got behind or before us.
I’m reading about new leadership and those of us who are navigating our third act. It’s up to us to leave a legacy for the ones coming.
For the young and the young at heart as much as for those who are tired and weary and could use some tender loving care.
Over lunch, Chiara was talking about the team working on the latest section of the Brainland Opera.
“Oh, she’s one of the youngest, she’s only in her sixties,” she said.
How wonderful.
May it always be so.
Till tomorrow
Love,
Mikey