“OK, write about it,” my friend said when I test drove the topic I’ll share with you today. “Just don’t spend too much time reminding me of the pandemic. I just can’t talk about that anymore.”
“I gotcha,” I replied, and yet here I am mentioning it. Only to make my point, of course.
The pandemic was dislocating for so many of us, all around the world. For those whose previous life had featured a predictable commute to the office, and a fairly regular sort of work day filled with meetings with co-workers and clients and customers, with some business travel thrown in here and there, things got particularly dislocating because it seemed like everything changed. In a quick, confusing minute.
No more commute. No more shooting the breeze with Chris and Kate in Jerry’s office. No more lunches grabbed at the deli down the street.
No more business travel.
You know, on an average day as a working professional, before the great dislocation, you might have spent less than five hours at home with your family. Let’s do the math: Wake up at 6:30am, eat, get ready for work, get other people ready for their day, out the door at 7:45am for your 45 minute commute to the office, arriving at 8:30am. Work all day, leaving at 6:30pm, now it’s an hour commute, getting you home at 7:30pm. Walk the dog, have something to eat, help with homework, watch some TV, in bed by 11pm. That’s 4.75 hours awake at home.
On a good day.
Having 24 hours a day at home was extremely dislocating for so many of us. Relationships calibrated by distance became frayed. We learned that what you can put up with for 4.75 hours a day becomes unbearable when the hours stretch out.
So marriages ended, and friendships, too. Which created significant dislocation.
Everything, it seems, that we had relied upon to order and structure our lives went up for grabs. And, a few years after it all went down, here we are, still feeling pretty dislocated.
Office buildings are empty. Do you go in two days a week, or three? Does anyone go in five days a week? Do you even bother to go to trade shows? Conferences?
Oh, and the people you worked with in December 2019? You might not be working with them now because of the Great Resignation. Or downsizing. Or sector collapse.
Dislocation.
Add in the rise of Gen Z (earliest career folks) and Millennials (the oldest of whom are now 43 years old) in the workplace, with their deep desire to marry ambition with boundaries, to have a say in the operation of the organization, and you get another dislocation, especially among the people who came up through a command-and-control, do what you’re told system.
The profound dislocation that comes when nothing that used to work continues to work - it’s hard, friends.
And stops plenty of us in our tracks, causing uncertainty, unhappiness and deep stuckness.
Are we doomed? Does it ever get better? Can we move from dislocation to… location?
Sure, we can. In fact, I believe we are called right now to become located. It just takes a little thoughtful reorientation.
First, 2019 is never coming back so lovingly leave it in the past where it belongs. Holding that Before Time in your mind as “right” is holding you back from all that’s available to you - here at your fingertips.
So locate to here, now. Locate around what is working in your world. Locate around innovation and embrace what there is to learn in something new.
Locate your people - your community - embrace them, and don’t let them go. Let these relationships center and inform you.
Locate your sense of humor and find the joy of discovery. Learn from your early career colleagues and learn from your later career colleagues, too.
Allow your mind to change.
This moment is where you are. Right here, right now, breathing.
There is so much available to you, if only you open your eyes, and your heart.
Feeling dislocated is only cured by actively seeking out location. Here. Now. You. Me.
Us.