As you may have noticed, last week nothing came out either. But by now you know me. The posts arrive when they arrive, and when they do, they are part of my thinking, my situation, my journaling. In short, part of what I genuinely enjoy sharing with you, building with you, and feeding into the rhizome I dream of creating.
Today’s post is a kind of melting pot. During the week I had been leaning toward a different topic, but a mix of situations across work, personal life, family, and after last night also social life, led me toward a broader reflection. Some might call it the classic “summer musing.” But for those of you who read me and know me: it is not that.
The phoenix, without self-pity
You know well the difficulties of this period and the challenges I am facing, and I do not want to bore you with them. The global economic and social climate is certainly having an effect, no entrepreneur, shopkeeper, or employee is sheltered from problems, surprises, or uncomfortable situations anymore. This period is testing me precisely on the stoic side of things, and perhaps that is the best part of it. The days hold up, they build, they move forward. Looking back, I am satisfied. But even amid these moments, when something lands on the personal front, you feel shaken.
In moments like these I like to reach for mythology, with a bit of abstraction, and bring up the good old phoenix. Over the course of my life, news capable of sending me into panic, into crisis, almost paralysing me, has landed on me more than once. But every time, resilience, and in more recent periods antifragility, and underneath it all, rebirth. Yes, rebirth, because that is the key point of the phoenix.
This time it went the same way. Perhaps I was not yet who I am today when I first started sensing it, and perhaps this situation could have been avoided. But. As the Stoics would say, if something does not depend on us, we should not suffer it, even while being fully aware of it. And this time, for the first time, that is exactly what I did. I felt it, but I did not let it overwhelm me. I faced it. Bitterness, some sadness, yes. But also happiness for the other person, and hope that they find their own peace. And underneath, me, working to turn all of it into something positive, into further growth.
Because let us remember this, and this is the point I want to push: we must not collapse, we must not see ourselves as phoenixes in a self-pitying or self-congratulatory way. We must look events in the face, walk through the pain without collapsing, at least not destructively, and observe the variables. This way, in the long run, things can only improve. In the short run, sometimes it will feel awful. That is part of the flow. And if we live that flow well, we reach the end of the day with that familiar sense of wellbeing you already know.
The melting pot: when everything arrives at once
At the start I told you melting pot. Where does that come from? From the fact that, alongside this phoenix feeling, the liquidity issue, cash flow, came back strong. Partly because the news touched on it indirectly, partly because I had to put in writing choices I already knew but had not formalised, partly because the weekend, circadianly speaking, put me face to face with myself.
But there is a but. Metacognition observed the exact moment when my mind began slowly shifting from rumination to agency. It observed how certain choices, certain small steps, are acting on my Default Mode Network, the brain network that activates when the mind wanders and often fuels rumination itself, and are building new automatisms. In short, proof that the Go stones actually work. And if I look at tomorrow’s work, I am genuinely happy. If I look at today, you already know. But it does not end there.
What the missing community teaches us
Because then friends open up, sharing complex, difficult personal situations with me and my wife. They trust us, the friendship, the advice. In itself, something positive even within a difficult context, but capable of opening our eyes to a much broader theme: community.
Talking about it with Greta, we realised how mental health, our cognitive capacity, the very things you already know well, are objectively managed poorly as a society. There should be more support, more of a network, more understanding. Instead, it often gets minimised, judged, labelled. And that does not help, because it increases the difficulty, and even small support networks struggle to hold. It would take so little.
I look with hope toward the much-criticised Gen Z on this point, and the data backs me up: among younger men, the barrier around handling emotions is dropping sharply, while among older generations it remains a taboo in the majority of cases. Pandora’s box, in a sense, has been cracked open. And let me allow myself a subtle comment here: those who minimise, who judge, who look at you as if you were being dramatic when you talk about certain things, might want to look at those numbers before speaking.