Crisis Management

Every time I turn around, I seem to hear or read someone saying something about managing a crisis. I always liked that you can look at a crisis in two ways, negatively as a problem or positively as an opportunity. I remember reading once that the Chinese ideogram is two charaters, superimposed. (I don't know if that is true - I don"t speak or read Chinese.) The two characters are 'danger' and 'opportunity'. That captures the dichotomy that I recognize. You can look at a crisis in that dark light, that there is a problem of some kind. Or you can look at with the lighter colouring, that the crisis presents an opportunity for positive change.

A local social service agency changed its name to Point In Time a few years ago. Personally, I'm not keen on it - to the public, it doesn't speak to what the agency is about- but I understand it. They deal with people in crisis of some kind (you don't go to them if everything in your life is fine) and a crisis indicates you have reached that point in time where you are willing to change. Most of the time, people aren't willing to change, even if something isn't great, because the prospect of changing is scarier (read more painful) than maintaining life as it is. A crisis presents the opportunity to change that.

Negativity In Writing

I am no Pollyanna. I certainly have known my share of pain, have seen more anger than I want, realize the world can be a cruel, viscious place. But I write about people who struggle with diffculties with positive characteristics like determination, the ability to connect with others, the belief that things can and will be better.

But somewhere along the line, the negativity that used to be reserved for the antagonists in stories, what needs to be overcome, has crossed the line into something desireable. Protaganists are bitter, cynical, sarcastic, etc. There is an underlying positiveness in that they overcome real evil of some kind, but any positve effect on their characters is transitory at best - they remain cynical.

Maybe it's just what I read. I get the feeling fantasy, which I don't read, is based on positive characters who overcome difficulties to become even more positive.

Two questions then: Am I right, and if so, why is that optimistic view of people reserved for fantasy stories? Has the real world actually become populated by peo0ple who find the other characters entertaining and worth emulating?

Somebody Must Be To Blame

There are people whose response to any diffculty is to look for someone to blame. -Not to solve the problem, stop the bleeding or change direction, but to find whose fault it is. Somehow that gives them considerable satisfaction, even if they are the ones who are suffering or losing out because of the difficulty. Having someone to blame is more important to them than finding positive responses to the situation itself. Righteous indignation makes up for everything else.

It's not that I think examing a problem to understand how it happened is always a waste of time. The opposite is often true. It's important to recognize how a problem started, what fed it so that it became bigger, why it now has the stature it does. But the reason is so that change can happen so the problem won't be repeated. -Not so there then can be a kind of self-satisfaction now that we know who to blame.

Luck, Preparation and Opportunity

One of those hokey inspirational sayings that has always stuck with me is that Luck is when Preparation meets Opportunity. I guess it has always stuck with me because I think for the most part it is true. So often, what appears to be luck is really someone being able to take advantage of an opportunity because he/she has prepared for it in case the chance ever arises. Even if that preparation only involves thinking, it is still preparation. Someone who considers a possibilty and thinks about what he or she might do in the event the opportunity ever arises is ready to take advantage of the opportunity when it does come. Outsiders who haven't seen the thinking may only recognize it as luck.

There are genuinely lucky random things, such as having a lottery ticket drawn, and I don't consider buying a ticket to be preparation. However, what the person then does with the money fits into this. The money gives him/her the opportunity to do things he/she might otherwise not have had the chance to do. If that person has thought about it (preparation), he/she probably won't be in one of those horror stories we occasionally hear, a lottery winner who is bankrupt a few years later.

At work, I used to have an 'idea folder', scribblings of ideas I hoped to be able to do someday though at the time, they seemed unrealistic as there weren't the resources or the technology or something to actualize them. Then when I heard of of funding or a technical development or a project someone else had going that seemed to fit, I was able to respond. Some of those ideas are still in the 'idea folder', but it is surprising how many of them came to fruition even though at the time they were simply 'someday it would be nice' ideas. Someone once remarked to my boss that I was lucky, that I had fallen into a good thing in my job. Her response was to the effect that No, I had made the good thing. Certainly a large part of that was preparation, being able to take advantage of opportunities when they came along.

That's why I maintain a healthy dose of scepticism when someone seems to be lucky. I usually ask what they might have done in preparation.

-And none of this discounts positive thinking, the Law Of Attraction. That might well be the most important aspect of preparation.

Twenty Years Ago

Where were you and what was your life like twenty years ago? (ten if you're under 30, five if you're under 20 - you get the idea.) Perhaps more importantly, what were you like then and what are you like now in comparison?

It's doubtful that you are the same. If you are, maybe you need to examine why. Is it because you were perfect then and your life has been static since you see no need for anything to be different? Or more likely, have you buried yourself and your life in concrete, an attempt to avoid scary change - better the devil you know than the one you don't -kind of thing.

Change is usually painful. Most people don't change for positive reasons, because they want to, but because the pain of changing has become less than the pain of maintaining things the way they are. -And sometimes they have no choice in that. Many things in our lives are beyond our control, so if someone or something else changes and it has a huge negative impact on our lives, maintining the status quo becomes more painful than the frightening idea of changing ourselves and our lives.

So looking back, not to beat ourselves up but simply to recognize where we were at back then and what changes we've gone through since. Visiting the past is worthwhile - living in it isn't.

Thinking Backwards

I find myself writing a play, not something I ever thought about doing. However, I wrote a series of short stories - short fictional anecdotes really - that had the same speaker, an old retired farmer who is keenly observant and has a wry, gentle wit. I didn't know what to do with them until one evening I was at a fund raiser for the region's land trust and the MC was a local actor, a man with considerable talent, especially a keen sense of comic timing. Part way through the evening, I realized he would make a marvelous speaker in my stories, and maybe I should turn them into a play.

However, it evolved totally differently from my usual pattern. I always talk about 'thinking backwards', by which I mean when you have the general idea for a story, think about how it ends, then work backwards, thinking about what you have to include to make the ending make sense. Then think about what needs to come before that, both events and characters, etc. Eventually, you have a plan and you can 'write forwards', based on the detailed outline from 'thinking backwards'.

However, that isn't what I did here. When I began, I had no idea how it would end, so now that I have written the ending, I need to re-write earlier scenes, so the ending doesn't come out of the blue. The things that happen, the ways the characters act, the dialogue, etc. all need to fit realistically.

Generational Changes

During the last week or so, I've come to recognize just how much things have changed in my family. My mother had to quit school after Grade 8. It was the Great Depression, she was the oldest in a large family, and her father did not believe educating women was worthwhile. My daughter attended university in Scotland last year to complete a Master's Degree, and will be beginning a PhD program at the University Of Victoria next September.

How much things have changed in two generations.