Our Resilience is In Our New Work
Even in times of hardship or collapse, new work reaches for new possibilities beyond the crisis in which we find ourselves
Our world economy in 2020 will be at its worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s, according to the International Monetary Fund’s forecast released in April 2020. IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath: “The world has been put in a great lock down. This is a crisis like no other.”* In the IMF’s October 2020 World Economic Outlook report, a long and difficult recovery is anticipated with global growth is projected at -4.4% in 2020, and 3.5% in 2021.**
Our physical and economic health are intertwined
Gopinath acknowledges the death of more than a million people despite efforts to combat the health crisis. We have kept the death toll at one million, rather than allow it to be much higher. That global economic projection is based on uncertainty, however. The October 2020 WEO report notes that, “The uncertainty surrounding the baseline projection is unusually large. The forecast rests on public health and economic factors that are inherently difficult to predict.”*** Resolution of our economic crisis depends on resolution of the public health crisis, and vice versa.
Gopinath also identifies significant policy innovations over the last few months that have prevented more extreme collapses: “the establishment of the European Union pandemic recovery package fund, the launch of asset purchases by emerging market central banks, and the novel use of digital technologies to deliver social assistance in places like sub-Saharan Africa.”*** She notes that as we move into the next stage of the crisis, we “must seek lasting improvements in the global economy that create secure, prosperous futures for all.”
What will it take to create secure, prosperous futures for all?
Adaptation is our way through
We are caught between what was normal, and what will be new. One choice is to allow COVID to run freely through our communities and indiscriminately harm and kill people everywhere, knowing that it will cause collapse of our health and economic systems. The other option is to choose the hardship that comes with modifying our behaviour.
Embedded in this choice of “collapse or hardship” are three stark truths:
- We will not all survive
- We cannot go back to “normal”
- Our way through is by adapting to our new circumstances
Merriam-Webster defines “adaptation” as: adjustment to environmental conditions. When we choose to live our lives differently as a result of the pandemic, we are choosing to modify our behaviour in response to our circumstances; we are adapting.
Four examples:
- Citizens adapt by practicing physical distancing, working and teaching children at home, or the reorganizing household finances when employment or income is lost. Think of our changing shopping habits, hand sanitizer, masks, our limited social activities.
- Our healthcare systems adapt by creating and implementing mechanisms to test for COVID and track its transmission behaviour among us. How they care for any other illness has also had to adapt to ensure patients and health care providers remain healthy. Think of patient screening with questionnaires, COVID tests, hand sanitizer, masks and shields.
- Many businesses adapt by recalibrating the work they do, or by reinventing themselves. Some adapt to the disappearance of income, while others experience a surge in income. How we work, how we hire, how we relate to co-workers and customers is now quite different when we choose to adapt. Think of curbside pick-up, the increase of door-to-door deliveries, or the monitoring of the number of people in stores.
- Our community organizations notice and respond to the now much more amplified inequities in our communities. Needed action takes place in new ways. Think of the organizing to assist with services to the homeless during the pandemic, or the campaigns to address racial inequity.
If we insist on behaving as was usual, without adaptation, collapse of our health care systems will be the result. Our hospitals will not be able to handle COVID cases, let alone our other health needs. Deaths will be from COVID and well beyond. Our adaptation enables our health systems to work for us, so if we don’t modify our behaviour, we will be most unhappy with the services we expect in all arenas: hospitals, businesses, governments, social service agencies, transportation systems, waste collection won’t be working with employees sick or dead. Our cities and communities won’t be functioning, they will be collapsing.
Resilience: ability to adjust easily
Our ability to adapt depends on our willingness to receive information from the world around us, whether we want to hear it or not. Adaptability depends on us having the necessary emotional courage to receive feedback.
Resilience, defined by Merriam-Webster as the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change, is part of this survivability equation. Emotional courage has a critical role to play in our resilience because it enables our “adjustability”, that latter part of this definition. Emotional courage also helps us recover from misfortune and change because it requires us to experience, rather than deny, our experiences.
When we choose adaptation and resilience, we are able to respond to changing conditions; we are “response able.” When we dismiss or reject the reality of changing conditions, we are “response disabled.” Yet choosing to be response able becomes more powerful when we make conscious choices, rather than leave adaptability or resilience to chance.
The choice between collapse or hardship becomes a more powerful and conscious choice if, when we choose hardship, we reach for and create new possibilities for ourselves.
Our resilience is in our new work
For thousands of years communities, towns and cities demonstrate their adaptability through the creation of new work. The creation of new work is a survival skill that is creative and innovative.
People who generate new work recognize a creative impulse. They see an opportunity to create something new that we could not have been imagined, or they adapt when what worked no longer works. It happens everywhere: new ways to build our homes to make them more energy efficient, new systems to track how COVID spreads among us, or new ways to grow food.
Our resilience as communities, cities, provinces, a nation and a species depends on our resilience at citizens — our ability to receive feedback and adapt to changing conditions, which is to say we have to each work differently when the time comes. Our work, our contributions to the world around us, is how we create and recreate our worlds.
‘New work’ means thinking, making new things, and doing new things.
“New work” means thinking new things, making new things, and doing new things. While we look for ways to stabilize our cities and communities, we are looking for new work. For example, when we contemplate how to mitigate the financial hardship associated with the pandemic, we are called to reach forward into new possibilities. Like Rita Gopinath’s declaration that we “must seek lasting improvements in the global economy that create secure, prosperous future for all.”
The inequities revealed by the pandemic demonstrate that working in the old ways will recreate — at best — the same inequitable opportunities for prosperity. More pointedly, working in the old ways is not responsive to our new life conditions. It is not “response able” for both our present and future.
New work reaches for new possibility
New work reaches for new possibility even when we are hunkering down to make do with a bad situation. Even in times of contraction — or hardship or collapse — we plant and grow the seeds for simultaneous expansion. In fact, some seeds need crisis conditions (fire or winter) before they will be able to grow into their fullest potential.
When we choose to embrace the uncertainty in which we find ourselves, rather than fall back into the familiarity of what was, we will be resilient. We will look for ways to improve our circumstances. We will both contract and expand. The quality of work we do, paid and unpaid, on the ground in our homes, communities and cities shapes our future.
The question to ask ourselves: Do I do the work I do to keep myself busy and distracted, or is it purposeful, reaching for an improvement?
Our lives are grounded in our cities and communities, whether they are urban, rural, northern or remote. This is where life takes place. This is where choices shape our world. This is where we are feeling the impacts of the pandemic because this is where we get our food, have in-person relationships with people, work and make our livelihood, care for each other. It doesn’t matter how big our work is; it matters that we choose new possibilities for ourselves and others. And these places we call home.
Sources
*Associated Press, “Global Economy will suffer worst year since Great Depression of 1930s, IMF says,” www.cbc.ca/news/business/imf-worst-year-since-depression-1.5531430 (retrieved on Nov 16, 2020)
**International Monetary Fund, “Real GDP Growth Map (2020),” https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDP_RPCH@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD (retrieved on Nov 16, 2020)
***International Monetary Fund, “World Economic Outlook: October 2020,” https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2020/09/30/world-economic-outlook-october-2020 (retrieved on Nov 16, 2020)
Reflection
- What is the work I do to keep myself busy, numb or distracted? When is this work helpful or harmful to me?
- What is the work I do that feels purposeful? When is this work helpful or harmful to me?
This post first appeared at www.bethsanders.ca
