UNCERTAINTY TENNIS AND MAGIC ROUNDABOUTS

Photo by Shoiab Ahmed on Unsplash

We stand at a historic crossroads. The pressure is on. The future is uncertain. This window of hope is not here forever. There is an opportunity now to reset our priorities and make tough choices on the road to recovery. We need to bend into that call to rebuild if we are to thrive spellbound and come out of crisis. The longing is strong to secure and protect, to create contingency plans b, c, d through to z. The pandemic coupled with the simultaneous deep dive into digitisation, AI, automation, VR and big data is a massive transformation to hit the planet and humanity in one mother explosion of a cognitive shock.

As we get more comfortable with not knowing, with ambiguity and release the learnt behaviour to cling onto hard certainties like hang rope, we begin the journey toward our long term survival in this weird unchartered territory of 2020 and the decade to come. The past as was is not quite returning, everything in flux, media fears the darkest days are upon us, government and industry herald Marshall-like plans as emergency responses to Covid fallouts and regardless of whether you live in city or the countryside, our priority now should be to weather the storm and ride it out to a town called Hope - but also to live your life during the process too. Put a stake in the ground for a good (i.e. Star Trek) future after crisis. 

Your priority for your Resilience Magic now is: To have ability. To cope. To be hardy, protected and protector. To withstand. To take action. To recover from shock. To dance with chaos in her out-of-time waltz and step into transformation, for good. No small task indeed. To find refuge in ritual and selfcare.

2020 feels like grabbing my childhood porcelain Pierrot doll and smashing it to the ground from a great height. Those pieces cannot like Humpty Dumpty be put back together again, despite all the king’s resources and men. It is wrecked. Yet from that wreckage there’s a way forward. There’s bounce-back anew available. You have to CHOOSE TO PLAY. Choose to care. Here’s the game folks, an invitation:

To recover, to be magic in your resilience, to adapt to new normal, you must choose the bounce.

In today’s world, it’s hard to tell which way a ball (i.e. you) will bounce. Will it bounce backwards, bounce down, up, forward or off the court entirely? Will you and I bounce back from this at all? One thing is certain: a new era, a new epoch – astrologically, economically, technologically - is here. How can souls navigate it and it’s uncertainty - this brave new world of air – in challenging times?

We need to boost resilience and adapt quickly to all the volatility thrashing out all around us. We need to sustain this over time, so we don’t just survive, but thrive through this bad wizard's roulette game as one Jupiter-Saturn cycle ends and another begins. The ball is in our court and we need to play the new normal game to win, to ensure that we bounce forward, that our inner magic and happy soul prevails. Take comfort now in the game, be a sport and keep the faith in our good odds - may they be forever in our spiritual favour.

We must volley with the uncertainty on the court, for this is (to continue a tennis analogy) break point. We need to ace this, straight down the line. 2020 is a bitch of a wildcard. We cannot afford unforced error nor can we settle for a tiebreaker. Game, set, match to a grand slam is the only way out of this high-stake game. We must get out of the comfortable stands where we passively observe from the safe side-lines afar. We need to ditch that objectivity and remote viewing and move onto the court, like our life depends on it. For it does. And for our grandchildren too. This is for them, for our babies' babies.  

Resilience isn't about being 100% unbreakable (Humpty nor Pierrot doll were not) when pressure comes our way - without any weakness. Rather, it’s the ability to bounce back, again and again fast (check out Dr. Chris Johnstone's work in this psychology field). Uplifting bounce, like a ball in play. But one spinning cosmically, and we as travelers in it’s orbit.

As well as ball metaphors, I mentioned Tigger before on this blog, that’s who best came to mind as a shining example of resilient bouncy magic – or else, perhaps Zebedee? Another 1980’s childhood memory. Jack-in-the-box. He springs. He has bounce. This is the Magic Roundabout, and we are just big children, who play on the eternity merry-go-round, enchanted by it's spring and spin. Just keep playing. It's all magic. It's all child's play to the Gods. Boing, boing, boing.

Time for bed. It's nearly time for the news, and you've had enough magic for one day.