We are living in challenging times, and I have found it hard to focus with all the noise around us.
Everyday, our collective psyche is bombarded with old and new wars, a fraying global world order and geopolitics, all of which compounds the everyday challenges of the lives we lead.
In the midst, there is collective trauma.
Wars breeds dehumanization, the process by which society begins to think of others/a people group as less than human and therefore allows various forms of violence against them.
In times of war, we hear of regular mass killings and bombings.
We hear of women and children dying.
Soldiers losing limbs.
Schools, hospitals and infrastructure flattened.
We might be horrified. Our chests might be hurting from the pain of witnessing and the heartbreak of hopelessness.
We are collectively running the gamut of emotions, riding the grief curve from denial to anger bargaining to sadness and wrestling against acceptance of the world as it currently is. In place of dreaming of our futures, we are filled with anticipatory grief, worried about the impact of it all and concerned about what world our children and grandchildren will inherit.
For these reasons, when there are moments of joy and gratitude, they might be swiftly followed by guilt and despair.
Once again, as we were during the COVID-19 pandemic, I hear shadows of languishing in the conversations around me—that language that Adam Grant gifted to us to help make sense of the feelings of emptiness and lack of motivation you might experience at times like this-– because why does anything matter when a few powerholders seem determined to remake the world in their image or burn it all down?
We read, but don’t really take in the real impacts.
The stories just become abstract blurbs.
We, you and I, start getting desensitized to it all.
It’s just another story and tomorrow there will be another one.
So we might stop reading the news…dominated as it is with driving divisive engagement through slop and rage bait, the 2025 words of the year from Merriam-Webster and Oxford respectively.
We might retreat from the headlines for our mental health.
The retreat creates distance. And in the distance, we have choice.
“…everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way” Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, p66
We can choose to let our souls go bankrupt, gradually, then suddenly (ala Hemingway, since bankruptcy of the soul is arguably even more devastating than financial bankruptcy).
Or…
We can choose to fight for our individual and collective futures, wherever we find ourselves, one conversation or team or policy at a time. Towards a shared future, for all.
I choose to continue to stand for and with humanity, hoping and aspiring to the best of who we are, over the behaviours and systems threatening to break, divide and continually dehumanize us.
What’s happening in the world is what happens when we stop valuing human life—this I found clearly in my research and practice with war survivors and groups that have experienced social oppressions. When we move increasingly from disconnection, to indifference, to hate, to sacrificing each other for selfish ends rather than a shared future, we deliver violence, wars and atrocities. It is what happens when we sever our natural human need for connection to other humans. In the midst, I am intentionally choosing to dwell on what it means to stay open and I am choosing humanity.
Staying open means allowing myself to feel it all. It means holding the full range of the intensity of this moment. Rather than shutting down, it means, yes, stepping away for my wellbeing, but then stepping back in to engage, to listen and learn. It means allowing myself to feel rage and anxiety and also hug my children and feel joy and peace. It means letting that human space of feeling it all remind me to keep calling for more dignity and human rights in the world, so that everyone can hug their kids in peace and joy too. It means continuing to search for: What is this moment teaching me and us? What is this moment calling us to? What might be my part in continuing to work with others to co-create the futures we want rather than dwelling in anticipatory grief?
To stay open and to stay human, we must continually ask, listen and create the futures we want, rather than be passive bystanders in our world. This openness to ask, to listen and to welcome opportunities to co-create are core tenets and shared practices for transformation. It is part of what it takes to live and lead in the Grey Zone of Change. These practices reconnect me to shared humanity. They bring me back to connection and community. They restore my balance. Staying open and being human at this time restores my hope. Once hope is restored, it becomes easier to engage in the things we must all be doing to take care of ourselves and our loved ones, and to keep living life on purpose in traumatic times. It takes me out of grief and languishing, to focus on the transformative possibilities of this moment.
Being human means succumbing to the reality that social traumas require social healing. So I stay open and I stay human so that I can always stay connected to you. I hope you are taking care of yourself in these times, and I hope these words help in some way on your journey.
For more transformation and leadership ideas for these times at individual, organizational and systems levels, see:
Dialectical Leadership: New leadership calling in an era of polycrises
Living, Leading and Facilitating in Grey Zone Change