Are you a New-worlder or an Old-worlder?
You can build the world after this crisis — and you should.
This crisis will be over at some point, believe it or not. And we will step into a new world.
With hundreds of millions unemployed, global supply chains disrupted, oil reaching a negative price, international power relations shifting and our consumption patterns and social norms modified, this new world will be different from our old one.
How will this new world look like? Nobody really knows — but it will be shaped by New-worlders. By the ones that realize the breadth and the depth of the change that is already taking place, by the ones that dare to let go of the old world and focus on the new. By the ones that look forward, not backwards.
When you get in your car and you want to go somewhere, you don’t get to that other place by looking into your rear-view mirror and observing the road behind you. No, you look forward. You look at where you want to go. You might not even have been to your destination before, you might not know the streets and you might not know how it looks there, but you have a direction, you get started and with your eyes on the road ahead, paying attention to the signs along the way, you can get there. Not by looking into your rear-view mirror, though.
And certainly not if you never start the journey. If 80% of your plan to get out of this crisis consists of “ending the lockdown and reopening the economy” you are an Old-worlder. Get your eyes off that rear-view mirror and start looking ahead. Start the journey, observe the road, pay attention towards the signs, choose a destination.
It will hurt to let go of the old world — but it might kill you to get stuck there.
