Green Pastures
Mild disbelief. Was he dead? The hospice nurse had predicted my father’s passing for each of the previous five days, "certainly today." But he paused on the threshold and I remained vigilant, administering the medications every two hours. Having checked on him so many times and found him still breathing, still lingering, accepting that he was gone that morning required a shift. Tending to him, I realized the depth of my bias to sustain life. My father had prepared for this, living within the shadow of death more explicitly than I had ever seen anyone who wasn’t terminally ill. Being with him those last weeks required embracing this path, despite my still innately favoring a different trajectory, not because he was my father—we didn't share a particularly close relationship—but because people are supposed to live. I’m hardwired to seek the best results for Foresight’s consulting clients, for them to thrive. It’s frustrating to pursue a less-than-optimal strategy. I do it, or step aside, because, as with my father, I believe in their self-determination more. Through my work, I've witnessed the scope and intensity of the dysfunction of so many issues. Lack of affordable housing, cumulative pollution, and inadequate food, energy, and transportation infrastructures are outcomes baked into our systems. Attempting to address them without even acknowledging their root causes is folly. Ideas, plans, and strategies are crafted and asserted despite other approaches being required like perspective shifts, professional capacity development, and systemic restructuring. But it's difficult dealing with People and Power. Images of Earth from the recent Artemis II mission provided a fresh reminder, because we can't get enough, that we live on an island where, amazingly, life perpetuates itself through an unwavering life/death cycle. What will I do?
