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How to Build Resilience Within the Disaster
Feeling the fear? Here’s how to get to grips when things are falling apart.
“This awful catastrophe is not the end but the beginning. History does not end so. It is the way its chapters open.”
— St. Augustine
On my last essential trip in to central London, Oxford Circus felt like a small town. The tube was quiet, and not only in terms of numbers. Londoners may be notorious for making no eye contact and pretending no one in the crowd exists, but the silence that descended was eerie. There were no tourists trying to figure out which stop to get out at. No folks in suits talking about the strategy for their meeting. No friends having a laugh.
We’re in an unprecedented time of collective anxiety, uncertainty, and change. Empty streets, face masks, and scarce essential goods signal an ambiguous threat and descending fear at odds with the coming of warm weather, lengthening days, and spring growth. We wake up to new daily ‘death tolls’ and practice new social rules that go against our instincts to band together when times are tough.
But in many ways, what we’re dealing with isn’t unprecedented at all. Everyday life is full of disasters…
