Strands of Genius: Be Prepared, Life Lessons from Centenarians, How To Read Less
Strands of Genius: Be Prepared, Life Lessons from Centenarians, How To Read Less
plus our thoughts on: travel & the abstinence rhetoric, and free yoga on International Women's Day
WRITING FROM | Playa Bonita, Dominican Republic
WORKING ON | planning our next Experimental Learning Community and remote workshops for teams in Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar
LOOKING AHEAD
until we decide otherwise | Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic
Feb 26 | Creativity in the Time of Crisis with Heart & Mind Strategies (Register here)
Mar 8 | International Womxn’s Day | Genius Steals x Ladies Who Strategize: Free Yoga for Womxn
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
WELP. We did it. On Sunday, we flew for the first time since the pandemic was in full force. Faris’ last flight was returning from the UK mid-March last year, and my last flight was from December 2019. I was expecting it to feel strange, bizarre and upsetting, because that’s how most of 2020 felt. But to my surprise, I felt excitement, relief, and an undeniable joie de vivre coursing through my veins.
More thoughts on travel, and the abstinence thereof, after the links :)
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
TRAVEL, JetBlue, my brother-in-law Jason who facilitated our 4:30am departure, two outdoor terraces, jungle vibes, our neighbors Billy&Camille who stocked our apartment before our arrival, Komida (the app that let us order a Dominican feast without leaving our apartment), warm weather, palm trees & pools, and a renewed sense of happiness.
YOGA FOR WOMXN | SAVE THE DATE: Monday, March 8th @ 8a ET / 12p GMT
In honor of International Women's Day, the female founders of Genius Steals and Ladies Who Strategize (Rosie & Kim, who are writing in the third person for the benefit of this event) invite those who identify as female or non-binary to come stretch their bodies and minds together with this free yoga session, followed by a conversation about being women in today's workplace. Hit reply for the RSVP link, as we don’t want to get ZOOM-bombed by any haters ;)
Brought to you by Genius Steals x Ladies Who Strategize founders Rosie & Kim
Ladies Who Strategize is a community which helps to grow and foster friendships for female and non-binary strategists. We aim to warm up lives and lift up each other’s careers. We do this by creating moments to genuinely connect. These moments happen with membership to a supportive community: a thriving slack group, gatherings that encourage real friendships, and opportunities to share expertise and experiences. Apply to join the community here if you identify as female/non-binary and are a strategist.
:: THE LINKS ::
LIFE LESSONS FROM CENTENARIANS
BE PREPARED
Dan Rather is a 89 year old Texas native who got caught in the ice-storm blackout but also happens to be one of America’s most loved former anchormen and journalists. He wrote this scathing and insightful piece about his experience and why it happened, specifically the dangerous and toxic obsession his home state has on independence, the problem with all ‘just-in-time” efficiency corporate behavior and why governments need to plan for problems not just politics, and therefore the pull between the needs of constituents and the needs of their representatives. “As this myth of self-reliance has spread from proud individuals to the local, state, and federal government, damage has occurred in its wake.” (Substack)
HOW TO READ LESS
“We have adopted an Enlightenment mantra that runs in a very different direction, stating that there should be no limit to how much we read because, in answer to the question of why we read, there is only one response that will ever be encompassing and ambitious enough: we read in order to know everything. We aren’t reading to understand God or to follow civic virtue or to calm our minds. We are reading to understand the whole of human existence, the full inventory of the planets and the entirety of cosmic history. We are collective believers in the idea of totalizing knowledge; the more books we have produced and digested, the closer we will be to grasping everything.” So how then can we push against this thinking? It’s not as hard as one might think, according to The School of Life. (The School of Life)
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:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: ABSTINENCE RHETORIC ::
On Sunday, we flew for the first time since the pandemic was in full force. Faris’ last flight was returning from the UK mid-March last year, and my last flight was in December 2019. I was expecting our travel to feel strange, bizarre and upsetting, because, honestly, that’s how most of 2020 felt. But to my surprise, I felt excitement, relief, and an undeniable joie de vivre coursing through my veins.
I have spent the past year feeling devastated about the global pandemic — and how could one not? Faris predicted last year that a half a million people in the US would die before March 2021. It’s not one of those predictions you want to be right about, though he will be.
We were told - by the government, by our friends, by strangers, by the internet - not to do anything. And for the most part, we didn’t. We put our lives on hold, like so many others, and isolated ourselves. On the good days, we made it through without tears and posted our yoga practice with the #StayHome hashtag on Instagram. On most days, erm, the bad days, we blamed ourselves and each other for our despair and spoke about how there was no end in sight.
According to Tennessee, the earliest we’ll receive vaccines is Q3/Q4. So, as early as June, but as late as December is the official word on the street. We’re young and healthy, and can work remotely, without coming into contact with others on a daily basis, and we’ll wait our turn for everyone else to go first.
We had endless conversations about whether it was safe or smart to travel, with each other and our family. We talked about whether it was the right thing to do, as if there were a universal right thing for everyone. And when I say we had endless conversations — I mean, seriously. This topic has dominated not only our conversations, but has also been on an endless loop in my mind, even when we weren’t talking about it.
I texted my sister when we arrived, with a semi-dramatic text saying “Cried happy tears making my coffee this morning. My only frustration with the traveling was rueing over the fact that we waited so long… Yes, there’s risk, but there’s also risk to your own mental health when you put yourself into a shitty situation that you hate that you repeat every day.”
She replied, “It’s definitely the right thing to not travel all the time a thousand places, but to go places occasionally or for long periods, absolutely worth it for mental health. I wish the rhetoric was not abstinence-based!”
And it stopped me in my tracks. Because, I was going to say that on the bad days, I feel like I’m in an abusive relationship with my home country. (Like yesterday, when Faris went to pick up his last Rx yesterday, and it cost us $1400, just for him to, you know, stay alive.) Most days, I feel like the USA is the acquaintance that you do well with in small doses — but after a few weeks together, she’s an energy suck, and you find yourself thinking “never again!” Or, after you’ve settled down, perhaps it’s reframed in your mind as “She’s not so bad so long as we make sure we have shorter period of times together, and longer recovery times after.”
Instead, my sister got me thinking about abstinence. We know that abstinence rhetoric doesn’t work. It doesn’t work with sex education, or with teen drug usage (“just say no” was what we grew up on). So why wouldn’t it be the case with the pandemic? It turns out that I’m not the first person to realize this — “abstinence doesn’t work pandemic” turns up 1.8mm results — some from when we were only a month and a half into it.
In May 2020, The Atlantic published “Quarantine Pandemic is Real,” where author Julia Marcus argued that, “Instead of an all-or-nothing approach to risk prevention, Americans need a manual on how to have a life in a pandemic.” She went on to write, “#StayHome had its moment. The United States urgently needed to flatten the curve and buy time to scale up health-care capacity, testing, and contact tracing. But quarantine fatigue is real. I’m not talking about the people who are staging militaristic protests against the supposed coronavirus hoax. I’m talking about those who are experiencing the profound burden of extreme physical and social distancing.”
Marcus argued that by focusing on the abstinence rhetoric, we were missing the opportunity to promote sustainable long-term behaviors.
A month later, in June 2020, Marcus was invited to WNYC’s ‘On the Media’ where she made her case over the air for NPR listeners.
But by December, the same abstinence-only rhetoric was still sweeping through the country, though it seemed to be having less and less of an impact. In the Los Angeles Times, Amina Khan reacted to Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti asking people “to cancel everything.” “This kind of blunt talk worked to bend the curve in the spring, when fear of the virus was fresh. “But nine months later, the words seem to have lost their meaning,” my colleague Soumya Karlamangla writes.”
Khan continues with an alternative approach, “A harm-reduction pandemic response would explain the risk levels of different activities and let people decide their own comfort levels (though the most dangerous activities could still be prohibited). Research has found that this strategy makes people feel empowered to make their own choices and that, ultimately, they don’t take more risks than they would have otherwise.”
We’ve spoken and written about the perils of binary thinking, and yet we got trapped in the same thinking ourselves. If we stayed in the US, we’d be safe. If we traveled, we’d be dead (and our families would have to deal with retrieving our bodies.) But, I’m kicking myself for getting stuck in that mindset. I think it’s safer in an airport or on a plane than in most grocery stores in the south, where mask usage is considered optional (even in places like Publix, who say they require facial coverings.)
We’re not here in the Dominican Republic to reignite our social lives — We’ll be working from our condo, and taking the same precautions we took in the US. But we decided to wait it out somewhere where our mental health has a chance to recover. And, damn, what a difference does a change in perspective make.
Am I advocating for travel? Not necessarily. I can’t tell you how a chance in weather or traveling will impact your situation. I can’t know how it might affect your mental health. I don’t think there’s a universal risk calculation. But I’m glad we finally listened to our inner voices and found a risk-reward scenario that worked for us.
:: AND NOW… RETHINKING ::
If we can ever be of help to you, even outside of a formal engagement, please don’t hesitate to let us know.
rockON,
faris & rosie & ashley | your friends over at geniussteals.co
@faris is always tweeting
@rosieyakob hangs out on instagram
@ashley also writes for deaf, tattooed & employed
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It's called Genius Steals because we believe ideas are new combinations and that nothing can come from nothing. But copying is lazy. We believe the best way to innovate is to look at the best of that which came before and combine those elements into new solutions.
Co-Founders Faris & Rosie are award-winning strategists and creative directors, writers, consultants and public speakers who have been living on the road/runway since March 2013, working with companies all over the world. Our Director of Operations is nomadic like us, our accounting team is based out of Washington, our company is registered in Tennessee, and our collaborators are all over the world. Being nomadic allows us to go wherever clients need us to be, and to be inspired by the world in between.
Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)