If there’s anything this pandemic has given us besides uncertainty, it’s the gift of time. How did you spend your time over the past two years?
Was it time well spent? Did you become laser focused on what’s important? You already knew. Did you rise and fall (many times) getting lost in the ebbs and flow of uncertainty? Or did you reach out and connect with someone to see if they were all right?
What the world needs now and always is connectivity, not the virtual kind but the humankind.
“When we meet face to face, we become human. We lift each other up. We need this.” – Rev. Cecil Williams, Pastor
Virtual Connectivity
Technology can be a beautiful thing. I taught my 91-year-old Mom to video call me on her shiny new red iPhone XR. My 92-year-old Dad wanted to touch my face on the screen. We laugh a lot.
We celebrated one hundred days since the birth of my good friends’ beautiful baby boy and raised a glass of Prosecco in one hand and waved at the faces in the little Zoom tiles.
We celebrated the life of our faraway dear friend in Malaysia last week and recorded a message for her to hear in her final days.
And we, colleagues and students, are about to celebrate two years of online teaching next month! Has it really been two years?
Some may ask, what is there to celebrate? Will Covid continue to lurk in the shadows as we make our way onto flights and visit Level 4 countries? How much risk are we willing to take when we share a coffee with a friend or colleague, hug family, or hold the hand of someone suffering?
Human and Virtual Connectivity
Thirty (!) years ago, I was in the computer lab at University of Calgary, updating my resume. I had just returned from a three-year posting in Sulawesi with the University of Guelph and Global Affairs. A young man peered at my monitor and asked, “Do you speak Bahasa Indonesia?” And I answered “Bisa! (Yes, I can!)
That was the beginning of our long-term friendship. His Mom cooked me Indonesian food and he now is in San Francisco. We stay connected with visits and chats and have lively discussions about life in the time of COVID.
Recently he shared with me Conor Neill’s Sep 2020 video on two ways of approaching life, “Freedom from or Freedom to” and also on “making a choice or decision”. Professor Neill, who teaches leadership at the global IESE Business School in Barcelona, has explained with great clarity about the distinction in both. Tune in as he asks:
- Do you want to live your life merely to survive and removing pain or live your life making choices with confidence?
- Do you want to choose and take full responsibility and commit to making your decisions work or do you want to continually validate and justify the decisions you’ve made and say it wasn’t the core of me that has failed?
I believe wholeheartedly in “freedom to …” and choosing confidently, all in, 100%. Go celebrate! Go for coffee, maybe with someone new! Go hug and smile! Hold both hands, touch a heart, connect a soul.
Now you choose.
I am a high energy Instructor teaching soft skills at post secondary institutions in Toronto, Canada to anyone who is curious about connectivity and networking. My next webinar series starts March 12th https://learn.utoronto.ca/programs-courses/courses/3587-fearless-networking-connecting-creatively-confidently