There is a video making the social media rounds. An American airliner lands and taxis to the gate. A passenger films row after row of idle aircraft. It is a powerful statement as to what has happened. Those planes, as idle as we seem to be, sitting there sheltering in place. The image is bleak. Yet, it is merely a moment in time.
I read an article today by a woman who has been in isolation for 37 weeks. First due to chemo, now due to COVID. She offers 10 lessons. Rebecca Batterman talks about acceptance and controlling what you can control, about embracing the uncertainty and allowing yourself to find the opportunities, and about being nice to yourself. She also mentions that you should stop trying to understand why.
I think that there are two whys. The why in front, and the why behind. The why in front lands as “why not?” It allows you to re-imagine the future. The why in front plans and creates. It is about the possible. The why behind sounds like, “why me?” It is remorse and regret. It is despondence and worry. The why behind is about self-pity. I like the why in front.
The why in front is not about blind optimism. In his book “Good to Great”, Jim Collins discusses optimism with Admiral Jim Stockdale. Adm. Stockdale was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Collins asks him, “who didn’t make it out?” Easy says Stockdale, it was the optimists. They were the ones who said, “we will be out by Christmas” and Christmas came and went. “We will be out by Easter”, and Easter came and went. Well pretty soon Christmas came again, and the optimists died of a broken heart. He went on to say, “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” So was he an optimist or a pessimist? I think he was a realist. He later said, that he never doubted he would get out, and that being a POW would become a defining moment of his life.
We are in a realm of uncertainty. While we are not being tortured by a malevolent enemy. Our present is frightening, and our future is very likely to be different than we expected. While deep down we know that we will come through this, we don’t know what “normal” will look like.
Some of us will lose jobs or income. Some of us will lose loved ones. How that impacts us is largely a decision we will make. Unlike those airplanes that sit waiting for a pilot, or an Air Traffic controller, we can and must make decisions. A decision to accept the hard reality of a changed future. A decision to form a plan and to answer a “why” in front. A decision to apply the discipline that confronts reality, and yet, taps into the faith that we will prevail. Or a decision to focus on the why behind, and sit idle; waiting.