Working in a multicultural team

Remote teams have become more and more the norm in recent years, especially for start-up companies. We also work remotely to some extent — and are very multicultural. Our team comes from three…

独家优惠奖金 100% 高达 1 BTC + 180 免费旋转

How are you coping?

I fully embraced Buddhism in 2017.

Ill for a number of years — mentally ill, bipolar ill, mixed state suicidal and enraged ill — I can’t blame my breakdown in 2016–17 on Brexit and Trump, but I can confidently say they didn’t help. The world seemed turned upside down, what had once felt live solid earth suddenly air beneath my feet and me, the world, tumbling. Combined with the every day and everyday news of steady global ecological collapse, the future became something bleak and wild, and frightening.

I feared most of all for the kids, my beautiful young nieces. A cold fear, a fear they’d be bequeathed nothing more than social breakdown, war and hunger on a dying planet.

My episodes getting ever worse, my moods darker and more bloody, I realised I had to make peace with the world — whatever that meant. I had to make peace with the world or I would destroy myself.

I think the turning moment came when I realised the futility of wishing that the people I love should never suffer. It’s the most understandable feeling in the world, especially that forceful protective embrace we project onto the children we know. Please, please let them never be in pain, let them always be happy. I simply couldn’t take it if anything bad happened to you.

And I realised I was wishing them dead, or at the very best to never have been born. All the grief of the world is part of living in it. The best one can hope for is a long, healthy life, full of love — which is to say, full of grief, of loss, of watching everything you knew and loved fade and fall and die, because that is the destiny of everyone fortunate enough to live long enough, because all the grief of the world is part of living in it.

And in coming to know that — and I mean know in a full bodied, rich and deep sense, the way the eys know a sunrise is gorgeous, the tongue knows sugar is sweet — in coming to know that, I came to find peace with the world.

To accept suffering doesn’t mean to embrace it, or idolise it. It doesn’t mean you don’t fight it. The first three of the four great abidings of the blessed ones are companionship, compassion, and joy at the happiness of others.

And the fourth — the fourth is equanimity; acceptance that all the grief of this world is part of living in it.

2019. December, the Conservatives have just confidently won a general election. They won it with a dirty campaign, a cowardly campaign, Trumpian populism, racism, Brexit. Lies and a complicit media. Fear and ignorance. They won with fear and ignorance, and much as in 2016 my social media environment is in an uncomprehending rage.

I am still afraid for the future. My 20s and half my 30s lost to illness, I have no savings, little pension, I don’t know what society will look like as I get older, and older, and likely poorer and poorer. I am not certain or sure I will always have shelter, or warmth, or food to eat. I am likely to look on through tears as my friends and family die and if I live long enough I will eventually be terribly alone. I am still afraid for my future.

I am still afraid. The planet is breaking under our species’ greed and clumsy power, the climate destabilising, the deserts advancing, the oceans dying. Old democracies are turning to authoritarianism, deep divisions opening up in our societies. I do not know how much longer we can keep this wasteful, poisonous civilisation going. I am still afraid for the children’s future.

This election result is just one more rupture in a world which once seemed so stable and sure, but which I now realise never was and never will be. All the grief in this world is part of living in it.

I do not embrace this. But it is reality, and as such I cannot reject it.

Just as this body will one day die, this world will one day collapse. We can tend it and fight for it and do what is good, what is right, what is caring and compassionate and wise. And we can do all that while knowing that this world will one day collapse, and there is nothing we can do about it. Because it’s collapsing every day, every moment. It never was stable, it never was certain.

All the grief of this world is part of living in it.

Working in a multicultural team

How are you coping?

Add a comment

Related posts:

Land That Suits Your Necessities

Download latest version of google chrome for windows 10

Why the Baseline is so Important for Additionality