The future depends on today’s snow moon optimism
On Friday night, I found myself gawping at the sky along with hundreds of others across Edinburgh. The snow moon entranced us in a way that’s hard for an iPhone photo to capture.
I remember those nights of travel, waiting in Dubai, Doha or Istanbul. Having come off one long flight I’d have to wait a few hours before the next, morning flight would attempt to trick me into believing it really was breakfast time. In the waiting between hauls, the hour before sunrise in the middle of the earth is particularly dark — literally, mentally, physically.
“It’s always darkest just before dawn” was a thought first penned by the English theologian Thomas Fuller, in his 1650 religious travelogue A Pisgah-Sight Of Palestine And The Confines Thereof. We shared the same feeling in the same kinds of place, 370 years apart although he, I doubt, had the benefit of an airline croissant and dubious coffee to lift his hopes.
It is a metaphor that sprung to mind on Friday night, and this Saturday morning, as daffodils peek out from earth that was ice-covered barely two weeks ago. It was reinforced by others’ newsletters I read this morning (thank you, Andrew Wilson!). This piece was written for our own newsletter, The Provocation, which today reaches its 100th milestone, the first version put out during the dark first days of our lockdown in 2020.
Times are at their toughest for many. I’ve had tears from senior leaders in schools this month, pained faces and worry from commercial directors in companies that are older that my parents. In my home of Edinburgh, this ninth month out lockdown out of twelve, coupled with our cold and dark northern winter, has been a trial, much more than what felt like a short-term test when this all began last year with the bright mornings of Spring. But as Andrew Wilson put it to me this morning:
The thaw has begun in every sense.
This full ‘snow’ moon brings the thaw. The term was coined by Native Americans because the February moon hangs over the grimmest month of winter. Three weeks from now it will be the vernal equinox, as spring finally arrives for our hemisphere.
Every day brings four more minutes of light.
Every four minutes more gives us a fighting chance that we can shift from gawping in wonder at the snow moon to envisioning ahead to brighter days.
This is important. How we feel about today shapes the decisions we take about tomorrow. This is how Professor Diane Coyle from the University of Cambridge puts it:
What we think will happen to the economy in the future determines what we decide today — and thus shapes the future. That is especially important in 2021 as much of the developed world prepares for a vaccinated reopening of their economies.
It is the job of leaders to feel optimistic today for tomorrow’s outcomes depend on it.
This was the 100th “Provocation” email newsletter from NoTosh. We normally don’t blog them, too, but this one was special. Subscribe so you don’t miss out on other gems, once or twice a week.
