LIVE WELL in TURBULENT TIMES (Article 1 of 10)

Part of my living well is 'leaving my door open'

Hello, how are you?

Fine thanks

Really?

Well sort of… didn’t sleep well, you know, what with everything going on

Hmmm, doesn’t sound so good.

My career is over, but my vocation continues. For six decades, from when I was 16, I have done my best to do good stuff with and for people.

Somehow born into me, perhaps from my dad who in his teenage lived through his father’s death (and who perhaps had picked up the burden from his father who had emigrated from Ireland to London 120 years ago, only five decades after the injustices of the Great Famine). Maybe my vocation was fed by my mother who always cared for me, my older brother, the garden and those around her. Anyway, this vocation seemed an obvious and inevitable path for me to walk.

In 1964 I was singing along to Dylan’s anthem ‘the times, they are a changin’. Just a few months earlier, I had been shocked to my core by the assassination of US President John F Kennedy and four years later, I saw Martin Luther King shot on balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Throughout all that time the Vietnam War were raging. These, my teenage years, were turbulent times,

But this turbulence felt far away from home. I was preoccupied with the inner and outer turbulence of teenage, and I ignored the distant screams. Looking away was easy and much more appealing at that stage in my life.

Now it is hard to look away, and also I don’t want to. The screams are amplified from all corners of the world; and even, as I write under the calm sun by the river Thames, I hear them. I don’t like it, but I hear those screams.

Over sixty years the times have indeed changed, in 101 ways, and so have I - not surprising. I am choosing to discover ways to live well during my remaining years. And part of my living well is to leave my door open for anyone who cares to walk through so we can share and learn together. This is the impulse which drives ‘Live Well in Turbulent Times’.

I write as a reflective discipline for myself and as an invitation for you. This is an invitation not to look away, not to park whatever pain you may be feeling, not, as I did in my teenage years, to indulge the illusion that ‘it’ is happening far away. But it is an invitation to stop, notice what is happening and, in view of your life circumstances, decide what you will do to respond.

What’s coming after this 1^st article in the series?

· Article 2 is about ways I see how we are reacting to turbulence

· Article 3 summarises the seven things to I am doing (and which you may wish to consider doing) which are helping me to live well.

· Articles 4 to 10 dive deeper into each one.

This series of ten may have a ‘coda’ in which I will seek to summarise any comments which may be forthcoming. (So, intriguingly, this may become a series of 10 with 11 articles).

I will post an article every Wednesday for ten weeks until the end of June, each building on the previous. I’ve written them in what seems to me to be a logical order, imaging that you would read them in that order; you may choose otherwise.

Looking the horror straight in the eye, my friend said grimly, ‘It’s happening’. No longer a future possibility, massive turbulence is a current reality which was given awful new impetus by the election results in the USA in November 2024.

What I write is the expression of much pondering, discussion and reflection since that then.

Stunned, I protected myself from the media onslaught (article 4), I sat on a bench by the river in what has become a regular place for reflection (Article 5), shared with friends (Article 6), saw the face of hatred and vengeance (Article 7). Some months later and still motivated to respond, I added three more (Articles 8, 9,10 ) making a grand total of seven things that I am practicing and that you may consider doing.

Why do I bother to write? Now with fewer responsibilities than in earlier years, I could let the disruption pass me by. But I feel the heart, the soul and nature calling ever more urgently for my time that remains on earth. ‘How can I live well in these turbulent times?’ is definitely the question for me and is more pressing with every day that passes.

Maybe it an urgent question is for you too? Live well, not just tick-over, survive, good enough mode, but to live fully and well in these times.

Writing this Substack alongside saying yes to those activities which nourish, is my way of moving forward, with robust optimism. I write so that I may extend the existing influence I have and to benefit others, as best I can. I am not in a political position of power with decision making authority, yet (as all of us do) I have personal influence and can decide what to do with it.

By writing this Substack series, I'm doing my deciding aloud, and I hope there may be something in my experience and writing that will be chime for you - may you discover something in my words which help you to live well in turbulent times.

Next article 30th April ‘REACTING TO TURBULENCE’

This Live Well in Turbulent Times series accompanies the best seller and idiosyncratic novel business book ‘GOOD LEADERS IN TURBULENT TIMES: HOW TO NAVIGATE WILD WATERS AT WORK’ which is packed full of practical advice for leaders going through crises and emerging stronger. Act on the nuggets of advice that shine bright for you.