We're Going To Fall
“Are you ready?” asked the guy as he fussed over our lifejackets and ropes. Susan* and I gave the thumbs up. As the rope was released and the chute filled with air, we rose gently off the back of the boat. We’d chosen this tandem parasailing adventure to break up our business planning day in Noosa and to test our own ability to “let go”.
Susan had thrown the full range of “what ifs” at the guys all the way out in the boat. “What if the chute collapses? Are there sharks out there? Has anyone ever fallen into the water and had to be rescued?” They assured her that in 20 years no one had ever fallen from the sky.
“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”
Neils Bohr, Physicist – Nobel Prize 1922
When the rope broke we had just reached full height. For a moment we hovered, held in a silent and motionless pause. Then we started to fall.
Right now, the world is hovering motionless in The Long Pause. Borders are closed, most of us live under some form of movement restrictions, and we have been awakened to our utter powerlessness over what comes next. The one thing we must all face is that a fall is inevitable.
When Susan and I fell from the sky that day there was nothing we could do about it. After that brief moment of silence, I heard myself start speaking, maybe for her or maybe just for myself, “OK, we’re going to fall. The chute will slow us down so we won’t hit hard. But we will go into the water and we will go under, so take a deep breath.”
I say the same thing now. “We’re going to fall.” In fact we already are. While pressure mounts on leaders around the world to lift restrictions for economic reasons, there is no avoiding the reality that we already have the conditions for an economic recession, and potentially the makings of a depression. Our rope already broke. The question now is, “What happens next?”
As expected, when Susan and I hit the water we did go under. We were latched together in a dual parachute vest with me behind and her in front. What happened to one was going to happen to both. Our life vests brought us quickly to the surface but it seemed a long few minutes until the boat arrived and the shocked staff dived in to release us. As they hauled us aboard they were even more shocked to find that we were laughing.
“A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.”
Tom Stoppard, British Playwright
Our worst fears were experienced. Control was lost completely. Once the ride started there was nothing to do but to accept we were in it, talk calmly through it, take a deep breath and let go. When we climbed aboard that boat, we laughed because everything we thought we knew was wrong. We had fallen from the sky, and we had survived.
Now we’re all together on a global ride very different to the one we each planned when we woke on 1 January 2020. I’m in Italy and I know all too well that many will not survive this pandemic. They are the reason we must waste no time looking back and judging whether we have taken the right path. Here we are, and forward we must go, latched together to fall, then to rise.
And rise we will. Whatever hardship the world faces as a result of this once-in-a-lifetime event, and however long it might take to navigate our way through that hardship, it’s time to take a deep breath and let go. Then I believe we will be ready to resurface with fresh eyes, a deeper understanding of ourselves, and a readiness to start The Great Renewal.
*Susan Pearse is my long time business partner in our companies Reinvention & Mind Gardener. This story is from our first business planning day when Reinvention was born in 2000.
