Change is inevitable.
Just as today becomes tomorrow, the current state of affairs is fleeting.
One day a nation, however troubled, is standing. The next it is rubble.
One day you are cruising along with a consistent and reliable source of income. The next thing you know, you're idle.
True, these two examples are only superficially similar, but they have something in common regarding recovery: it takes a partner.
When adverse change grips a population or an individual, the first responder of greatest effect is another caring population or person, respectively.
I personally experienced professional upheaval recently in the form of a major client loss - 90% of my income. After slogging through the usual angst, I realized that my business had a partner who would enable me to re-build in a rational, orderly manner ensuring greater stability in the ever-changing future: Linda, my wife and partner of 33 years.
Through the stability afforded by Linda's position as the principal driving force behind technology integration in the curriculum of a large school district, and the reassurance she provided that we were financially OK, I was able to patiently and hopefuully more sustainably rebuild.
As a result, instead of blanketing the landscape with resumes and cut-rate offers of service, I was, and continue to be, able to target my outreach to potential clients who value what I do. I have restored relationships which had lain fallow as the departed "big enchilada" increasingly dominated my capacity. I am well on the way to generating a healthy revenue stream. Best of all I am doing interesting work for good clients. I have my partner to thank.
That's the way it hopefully will be with all of the cities and nations devastated by disasters natural or man-made. If local partners in long-standing step up and provide comfort, reassurance and simply make it possible for those effected to do the hard work of re-building, then vast swaths of humanity will be bound together by a combination of devotion and accomplishment that rogue or rapacious ideologies will be helpless to strain.
