"Humans have this phenomenal capacity to find meaning and purpose as a response to great difficulty. When we are confronted with a mountain that stands between the challenge of today and the providence of tomorrow, we find a way to climb it."

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Humans have this phenomenal tendency to get stuck in the moment. We get stuck in our own memories – sometimes lamentations of a past we can’t let go, or saccharine memories we don’t want to forget. Moments are the defining lines of the fullness of our lives, they are the destinations on the road trip of human experience. 

 

The moments that we encounter, gravitate toward, and pay attention to are the events that when pieced together become a woven map of who we are, what we think, how we think, and the choices we make. Birthdays are moments, as are weddings and funerals. Standing up to the bully or finding the courage to ask out your crush are moments. Triumphs are moments. Tragedies, unfortunately, are also moments. Right now, in this stage of history, we are knee deep in a moment. Things are not okay.

 

Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is the war in Gaza, which might be better defined as a cull, a necessary purge of Hamas from power and operation, one that has come at the expense of too many civilian lives. The war, of course, is top of mind for many. But zooming out, there are many layers to this moment in history.

 

We have two back to back generations that are figuring out how to ‘life’ properly (using ‘life’ as a verb here, bear with me). Millennials are the latchkey kids of the generations before them, left at home with the ingredients to make a meal but no instruction. And Gen Z are the progeny of said latchkey kids, tasked with figuring things out in a rapidly changing world that millennials have been too self-absorbed with their side hustles and wistful dreams of wealth and property to support.

 

It all feels so overwhelming! And hard. And impossible.

 

But it’s not.

 

Since we’ve already zoomed out a bit, let’s zoom out a little farther. What are humans good at? Adapting. Surviving. Cooperation (yes, actually). And fixing our screw ups (again, yes, actually).

 

This moment of war, inflation, uncertainty, moral dilemma and confusion, impending societal decay, and post pandemia – we’ve been here before as a species. Many times in fact. We’ve had worse wars. We’ve had worse famines. We’ve had worse pandemics. We’ve had ice ages and droughts. Human history has been very hard and we’ve had to figure a lot things out. And we have. That is what we do as humans. 

 

But sometimes it’s hard to see all of this when we’re mired in a difficult moment, as we are now. Let’s look deeper at who we are.

 

Humans have this phenomenal capacity to find meaning and purpose as a response to great difficulty. When we are confronted with a mountain that stands between the challenge of today and the providence of tomorrow, we find a way to climb it. When it becomes apparent that individual problems are collective problems that are experienced by and threaten us all, we come together, across generations and identities, to solve them. This has been our pattern for innumerable Millenia. Difficulties arise, we ignore them until they can’t be ignored anymore, we fight against each other, until we realize that we need to fight for each other, we come together, we cooperate, and we figure it out. This is when we are at our best.

 

So while this moment of history, however you’re experiencing it, can feel dire, whether because of inflation, struggles with identity, climate anxiety, or the impact of war, remember that this moment of hardship will pass. We will be better than we have been. We will once again wake up to the fact that the collective should not be sacrificed for the individual. We will confront old ideas, throwing away the ones that don’t work, making space for new ones that will. And then we will come together to build something new and different, something that works. That’s what we do as human beings. This is who we are.

 

We are survivors.

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