Something bad happened. What now?


 When something bad happens, people generally fall into two camps. One camp says: "This bad thing happened. We need an investigation and we need apologies. We need restitution. We need justice." These are all good things but they are mostly attempts to solve a problem that is in the past. This is what grief does. It makes us look back and value what has been lost. They build a lighthouse so others will know where the dangers are.

As we heal from grief, we ask different questions. What's next? This is the response of the second camp. That happened and it's horrible. But now what? What do we want next? They know that a lighthouse isn't enough. You also need a better boat if you want people to travel safely.

The second camp is the NLP (neurolinguistic programming) camp. It believes that the best way forward is to make a mental model of a desirable future. It's not enough to know what you wish had never happened. You have to know what you want to rise from the ashes.

Many terrible things have happened in the past year. There are two ways to take those seriously. One is to mourn our losses and seek some kind of closure. The other is to say: what does this pain teach us and how do we build something on those values and lessons?

If small business matters, we need to find a way to restructure our economy so that they are not most at risk the next time we have a public health crisis. We need to protect our communities in the same way that legislation and subsidies have protected big businesses.

If Black Lives Matter, it's not enough to stop the outrageous injustice. We need to ensure that every black child grows up with the security and resources necessary to thrive and that every black person has the same chance for safety and opportunity as their white peers.

If Every Child Matters, it's not enough to grieve or rage against terrors in the past. We need clean water and healthy food, safe homes and education for every indigenous child.

Problems are not solved with values and they are not solved in the abstract. They are solved one situation at a time by asking: what do we want now? And then taking steps to make it happen. We cannot change the past and we cannot improve the future through grief alone. We have to change the future, one action at a time, by defining what we need for health and growth and making that happen.

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