The New Landscape
It’s so interesting to be hearing all the news not just about our own economy woes but also those all over the planet. Japan’s had the worst quarter at the end of 2008 since the 1970s because so many less people are buying their cars and electronics. China is having a proliferation of pyramid schemes cheating people out of what little money they have promising quick financial gain to people who are hurting financially. Our ports are suffering because less people are buying stuff from China so China isn’t buying our discarded cardboard to recycle and make more boxes for new stuff to ship back to us. And most of what we hear in the news is arguments about whether tax cuts or spending will heal our own country’s economy. I’ll say it again, we’re all in this together. As Thomas Friedman says in The World Is Flat, it’s the Synthesizers who will be able to navigate this new landscape. Those who can take knowledge and skills they’ve developed in one area and apply it in another. Or, another way to put it, those who can keep their knees loose will make it over the bumps. That’s what I learned skiing — the way to take moguls on a ski slope is to keep your knees loose and bending like springs to absorb the shock. We all need to keep loose, chilled out, trusting in all our own various abilities to get through this one. It’s already, and is going to continue to be, a wild ride through this new landscape.