Month: March 2022

A Man’s Past is More Important to Him than his Future

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That was a throwaway line in a TV show that I saw a long time ago. I don’t think it was meant to be a profound statement of truth, but it really resonated with me. Because it’s true, to some extent, at least for me. I think about my past quite a bit, especially the bad times. I try to draw lessons from those experiences, insight that will help me do better in the future. But it isn’t easy.

Today is a strange anniversary for me. It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years since I was pushed out of the nest. Ten years ago, I lost a job that I loved, at a place I had planned to stay for the rest of my working life. But the job ended, suddenly and without warning. As a result, I was forced to reevaluate myself, to move in a new direction. I had to to leave my comfort zone and reinvent myself. It was a painful period in my life. But I got through it. I have since moved on, and not only to a different job. In many ways, I have an even more meaningful and fulfilling life now. But of course at the time, I didn’t know how things would work out. At the time, it was devastating.

Having the rug suddenly, unexpectedly, and unceremoniously yanked out from under my feet left a mark. I won’t rehash the unfortunate circumstances that made me leave my job at the university (for context, you can read the open letter that I wrote). It was a life-changing experience. The process of adjusting to my new reality, trying to get back on track, looking for a job, was stressful and frightening. We had a mortgage. Our older son was just about to start college, and our younger son was still in high school. We didn’t know what would happen. We didn’t know if I would be able to get a job that would maintain our lifestyle, if we could keep our house, if we could keep our son in school. As we were trying to move forward through this scary time, my wife cried, more than once, out of worry for our financial stability, for our future. I lost a lot of sleep, too. It was a low point in our lives.

We’re in a good place now, but it took some time and effort to refocus and rebuild. It took some sacrifice, too. I had to take a job that was not nearly as prestigious. But it supported my family, and was a good bridge to my current career.

It’s easy to look to the past, and it can be useful to reflect, but you have to do it the right way.

My past is meaningful to me, but is my past more important than my future? Maybe it can be, but maybe it shouldn’t be. We carry memories of our past with us as we move through life. In that way, our past is always with us. For better, but more often, and too often, for worse. It should be that we use our happy memories, the memories of our successes, to prop ourselves up, make us believe in ourselves. That perfect test score, that time when we made someone smile, the time we won the foot race, the births of our children. Those memories should make us feel confident, give us inspiration and courage to take a chance or to be bold. But it doesn’t always work that way. Sure, the good memories are here, but the bad memories seem to have extra power. Stupid choices that we made, times when we made fools out of ourselves, when we did and said things that we are ashamed of. Those memories can dominate our thoughts, casting shadows of doubt on our confidence, sometimes on our self-esteem. Memories of bad times seem to be more vivid, more prominent. They’re the first things that pop into our minds, especially when we have a setback. Self-doubt and the resulting blow to our self-confidence make us our own worst enemies.

Yes, my past is important, and I try to learn from it. But right now, I choose to make my past less important than my future. A ten-year anniversary is also a good time to look to the future. This year I turned 56. My current career has a mandatory retirement age of 65. In ten years, I will have already retired. That reality might be stressful for some people. To me, it’s liberating. I know that my family will be financially stable after we retire. I don’t have to worry about money. I can focus on how I want to use the remaining time that I have in my career. On the experiences I want to have, on how I can help my coworkers, friends, and the people in the countries where I work. In ten years, when I am retired, I want to look back on the memories that I’m building now with a sense of satisfaction. I want to be lifted up by happy memories, not weighed down by regrets.

Rather than struggling with unhappy memories about the past, I’m focusing on my future. I’m doing everything I can to make my future memories as rich and uplifting as possible. The past is written, it can’t be changed. The future is full of possibilities, and that is where I’m putting my attention. My future is more important to me than my past.

There’s a Nation-Wide Shortage of Sleeping Bags

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“Everybody out, now, go!”

My supervisor waved everyone toward the exits, as he rushed around the office, locking all the doors and securing all of our materials. I grabbed all of my stuff, made sure that I had my mask on, checked that everyone on my team got the message to leave, and rushed out of the building. People from other offices in the building were also scrambling to get out as fast as they could. No one was panicking, everyone was calm, but they all showed the same urgency to get out of the building. No one wanted to get stuck inside.

A few years ago, I took the special training course that the State Department requires for all diplomats posted overseas. The official name is “Foreign Affairs Counter Terrorism,” or FACT. We call it “crash-bang.” It’s a week-long course held at a military base, and it prepares us for when things go horribly wrong while posted overseas. Among the modules are defensive driving. We got to crash cars into other cars. It was incredibly fun. The first aid section was stomach-turning for several people. Can you say “sucking chest wound?” We even got to practice crawling through a smoke-filled room, and climbing into a helicopter while wearing flack jackets and helmets. The training is serious and important; I know that people have saved their lives and others’ at post when things went south.

Here’s a CNN story about the FACT course, if you want to know more.

Stubbornly adhering to its zero-tolerance COVID-19 policy, the Chinese government is struggling to control the latest outbreak. The omicron variant has come to China, and just like in the rest of the world, its high infectious rate is causing outbreaks throughout the country. The absolute numbers are small. While the United States saw daily cases numbers in the hundreds of thousands, this week the new daily numbers are in the low thousands. But when your goal is zero, any new case is unacceptable. And there are consequences of this hard line. Local officials have lost their jobs because of their inability to control the spread of the virus. The local health authorities have seemingly absolute authority to control people’s movements and to implement lockdowns and mandate mass testing. All of which we are seeing in China this month.

I don’t know exactly what’s happening in Shanghai now. There isn’t a lot of objective, clear news. And the policy seems to be shifting. In recent weeks, we saw several cases of businesses being locked down, and anyone who happened to be inside when that happened had to get comfortable. They were stuck there for 48 hours while they were tested twice before being released (if their tests were negative, of course). This has happened to people that I work with. The father of one of my coworkers was identified as a “close contact” of a confirmed case. That meant that he was carted off to a quarantine facility, which in this case was a hotel room. He’s confined there for 14 days, while getting tested twice a day, every day.

There is a silver lining to the increasing numbers of COVID-19 infections in China, though. Just like in the rest of the world, although omicron is more contagious, it’s much, much less severe. Although infections are up in China, deaths aren’t. And the vast majority of confirmed infections are asymptomatic. COVID-19 simply isn’t having a large impact on people’s health.

People aren’t afraid of getting sick anymore, which is good. But they are afraid of getting caught up in the government’s unrelenting zero-tolerance measures, which have not yet changed. And the current approach has an enormous impact on people’s lives.

The reason that my supervisor rushed everyone out of the office was because he got word that our building was going into lockdown. This is happening all over the city. Once a building is locked down, no one can leave until the health authorities say so. One of my coworkers was called home in the middle of the day last week, because someone who lives in her apartment building was a close contact of a close contact. Once she returned home, she couldn’t leave her apartment for three days. She had to have two negative tests before she could return to work. Another coworker received the same notification. She has already been tested four times, and she still hasn’t been given the green light to leave her apartment. Today is day seven for her.

The reason everyone was eager to leave the building was that no one wanted to be locked down. Getting locked down anywhere is bad, but being locked down in the office is much worse than being locked down in your own house.

Back in normal times, pre-COVID, we were encouraged to prepare a “Go Bag” in our house. In the case of a sudden emergency, if we had to leave in a hurry, we should have a bag with a change of clothes, our passports and important documents, etc. If we were being evacuated, we could grab the bag on our way to the airport. Now, we are told to have a “Stay Bag” in the office, with a change of clothes and other necessities. Last week I bought a sleeping bag to keep in my office. I wasn’t the only person with that great idea, and I know that, because now there’s a nation-wide shortage of sleeping bags.

I got one of the last ones on the market.

Sure enough, the building where I work is now in lockdown, so I can’t go to work today. Yesterday, we heard another rumor that my apartment building would be locked down today. We haven’t heard anything yet, though. In theory, we can go outside and walk around. But no one wants to enter a store, because once you’re inside somewhere, there’s a chance that you could be locked in.

China is experiencing a strong case of deja vu. Is it 2022, or 2020, too?