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Let’s face it. This is an altered world. It’s not the world it was just a few weeks ago. Truth is, it will never be that world again. Oh, sure. We’ll be able to go about our business again eventually, but it’ll be a new world, the old one altered in ways that simply can’t be undone. Some of us won’t be here to see that, but the rest of us will definitely move forward. It’s sorta what we do as humans. We keep moving forward which is great because life is fraught with craziness and crazy people. You just never know when something is going to go zig instead of zag then suddenly it’s pearly gates time and the rest of us just keep moving on. 

It isn’t that we want the world to stop entirely, but we would kinda like it to at least notice that we’ve stepped off the bus. We were important, after all. At least to someone, somewhere, and at some time. We might have been too busy to notice when a few others exited the carnival ride, but people should notice our exit. Or maybe not. For the past several decades I’ve watched thousands of people dying a little each day and never noticing that others were doing the same. The teams who truly excelled, the ones that will hear about the fallout from Covid-19 but continue to rise and bring new faces and ideas into their practices, those teams are the light of new opportunity. They’ll adapt and grow and spread their messages lifting us from what was, stripping away the things we no longer need, and showing us a future we can’t live without. A river of stars spilling out into the universe, carving bright new paths.

Team is about raising each other above where any of us could reach ourselves, standing together, and putting all of us before ourselves. Let me say that again, putting all of us before ourselves. Not putting others before yourself. That’s a short road to a lonely and complete destruction — being a part of a team of people who don’t take care of all of the tribe but only everyone else in the tribe. It’s also not putting yourself before others. That’s not team. That’s not tribe. No point in being on a team where people put themselves before others. Anyone can get that without a team. 

And as some much needed items run short in supply these days, we are reminded how each of our actions impacts the lives of the others with whom we share this space. Taking more than we need, even just a little more, leaves others without, and yet having taken that little extra ourselves, we are no better off, no less likely to get sick and no less likely to end up in need. When that happens we believe that others should put us first, put our well-being first, and so when we head out into this altered world, we have to think first of how what we are doing will impact others. If we can’t do that, then what is the point of anyone being on our team in the first place? 

Putting all of us before ourselves. 

So, in an altered world, we have to ask ourselves what we can do to hold onto the things that matter most. The answer requires us to look into ourselves to see with clarity. We have to be mindful not only of our own spoken beliefs but the beliefs that show themselves when no one else is looking. There’s a chasm between where we are and where we want to be, and it’s our life’s purpose to bridge that gap. As social, problem-solving animals, we just can’t get there alone. New teams, new tribes. These will come together with new messages and new ideas for us.  In the end the answer requires us to look at what of the old we must give up to regain what we actually need. That’s not a bad thing, it is removing those things that distracted us from what was important. Maybe that’s the message in all of this. We were distracted, and now, we are looking around and seeing that we have to help each other.

I’m heartened by the care and concern most people are showing for others. Sure there are some complete jackasses out there, but most of us are reaching beyond our own fear and trying to help each other out — from a socially responsible distance — waiting for the grumbling and crashing to subside so we can see where we end up and start bridging that gap, together, to a new future in an altered world. This is what we do, what we are good at, and we are better at it together.