I’ve been doing this entrepreneur thing long enough to have lived through two large-scale crises. The first year I launched a custom software development firm, we were in the throes of the Great Recession. I remember the worry of it: crunching numbers in spreadsheets again and again, hoping that somehow this time the number at the bottom wouldn’t be red. I remember the desperate discounting and clawing for business to stay afloat. I remember hearing the whispers of failed businesses and shuddering out silent tears for those who gave it their all and couldn’t pull off one more miracle.
Yet, amid the chaos and struggle of that year, there was a sense that we were all in it together.
In 2008, people talked to each other. We ranted about what we were going through and what we were afraid of, our hopes for the future and our roughly sketched plans. A client learned I went through something tough and called to see how I was doing. I told him my fears and he said, in short, “F--k em.” It wasn’t a solution, but it helped.
This year, our problems aren’t universal. Everyone seems to be afraid of something, but not the same things. We are suspicious of each other. We stake out our positions and hunker down against an attack we can’t see but are sure is coming. We keep to our own corners.
In 2020, we choose our audience carefully. We find the one friend we can talk to, the person who will get it (or maybe a journal) and pour out our story, the struggles and loneliness and also the way we hope we can find forward. We cut ourselves off from those we think have it better, and those we think have it worse, and bump along on our own little blindfolded journeys, feeling around for the way through.
In 2020, those voices raised in private have a sharper edge, as though someone is grasping for something they desperately need that is just out of reach and watching it repelled by their fingertips, again and again. Pale ghosts of dreams are thrust into the searing sunlight, leaving us squinting and gasping and wondering what the hell happened. People shout out in raw emotion, our chants swell to the accelerating drumbeat, and our voices individually and collectively rise up, up, up, like smoke winding from a bonfire toward the heavens, pleading for relief from it all: the loneliness; the worry; the injustice; the loss; the uncertainty; the ever-present disaster reel, glitching in an endless loop of unequally distributed pain.
And yet, there is no relief from above. It’s as if God said, “Sort it out.”
Sometimes, just speaking aloud the battle we are fighting inside is enough to sort it out. Sometimes we just need to say it to ourselves. Whether in a barking cry or a wobbly stammer, saying “This is what I need and I can’t go another day without breathing life into it by speaking it out loud,” can be healing. Sometimes, that is enough.
Sometimes it isn’t.
Sometimes as much as we need to shout into the abyss, we need to find the other half of that moment, the return serve from the partner across the net that makes us whole again when we have thrown the molten core of ourselves out into the biting cold air: the gift of being heard.
I have been told that I am a good listener, and if I am, I know that I learned it from the strong women around me. They taught me that there is strength and love in giving someone your undivided attention to so they can release what’s buried in their heart, that there is profound trust built in accepting the shivering mystery of someone’s unfiltered thoughts, precious and a little frightening, and watching as it shudders to life in front of you. This is the essence of connection.
What my strong women friends have taught me is that people don’t need someone else to fix it, but they need to know that their story matters. There is comfort in having someone take in your pain and say, “This is awful and unfair and I can’t fix it but I see it and I ache for you.” To see a reflection of our own story in another’s eyes is a balm to the isolation we all feel when things aren’t going the way we want. Some years, that is enough.
But not in 2020. This year that recognition from our kindred souls is essential, but it is not enough.
In 2020, we need to know that there is hope that tomorrow will be better. Hope comes from understanding what we want and believing that we can get there. I have always found that in order to get that guidance, we have to listen in the moments between the beats of our lives. We have to find the stillness. Perhaps silence allows us to finally hear, amongst the wisps of one’s own quavering voice, the echoes of a truth we are finally ready to hear, a truth that we may not have been ready to understand until we heard the words out loud.
The truth that the struggle is worth it, and so is the surrender.
The truth that we are tiny specks riding waves that we cannot hope to control, and yet we can choose to raise the sails.
The truth that all the pain, and the trying and failing and getting up and trying again have led, slowly, through a thousand tiny twists and turns, to a moment where you stand alone under an infinite night sky, clinging tightly to the dreams that you hold dear, eyes locking on an icy bright star, and you know with certainty, perhaps for the first time, that you will find your way home.
All is calm. All is bright.
