This unparalleled experience in 2020—yes, unequaled—has stripped the pretense of life, that artificial assurance that our lives are buffered from tragedy, trauma and loss. Everyone globally stands in this moment of foundational change on a personal and collective level.
In recent times we’ve had a tendency to avoid talking about trauma and loss, partially because we don’t know what to do with the discomfort of not knowing what to say. There is nothing more powerful than to just be, to be present and stand in the moment of transformation without having to control or manage it. As the stories are accumulated, the epic truth is that it was not money or technology that brought us through these crises, but the power of the human spirit—the deep resiliency that is the call of humanity to join together in unity and pull on the creativity and imagination of what might be possible, now, in this moment, and with each other.
In the midst of this pandemic crisis, we experience what it means to be part of humanity, to feel helpless and yet powerful, to have to pull on your resilience and courage and imagination like perhaps you’ve not done personally and never collectively before.
As we enter into the healing and rebuilding phase, there will be no short-cuts, but we can be thoughtful in our approach that we honor the experience and learn from it. It will not be lives or business as usual. And it shouldn’t be. We have an opportunity to rebuild with fresh perspective and higher expectations, with more courage, resilience and discernment.
Yes, we have to reboot our organizational systems, we need to stimulate and focus investment in the economy, we have to examine and redesign our systems that failed in the response to the crisis and embrace innovations from our learnings. What will support and drive the rebuild and redesigning of our strategic, institutional and commercial lives will be the health and resilience of the human spirit. Those collective aspects of what makes us a thriving and healthy society. We need to equally prioritize those sources that feed and nurture the health, imagination and experience of what it means to be human and part of humanity.
There is a reason that art above all else has transcended most elements of history. It has cut across the thresholds of industrial revolutions, technology and theologies, as the inspired nourishment of the human spirit and imagination. It allows us to experience our human-ness without having to give it voice.
Art defies rational and strategic language to understand what it does to and for the immune system of humanity. When it is missing we become restless, soulless and lacking in imagination. We crave to be surrounded by art in every form and function. When we try and quantify, justify and rationalize it, we separate it from the power that we innately understand it holds. Art in all its forms will be a critical element to our healing and emergence into this next chapter of our being. Here is to an unwavering commitment to human health—mentally, emotionally and spiritually.