The Sun will Rise Again and we will Be Better.

As we face turbulent times I thought I would share some of my personal story that seems fitting and hopefully you will find helpful. 

My first time of uncertainty...

In October 1962, I was almost 8 years old when the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the spectre of World War III in my home town in England. The UK housed US missile sites so these would have been a direct target in a nuclear conflict. I lived in an area of England that also had one of the RAF’s Vulcan Bomber Command Aerodromes nearby. Each day we lived with air raid tests, overhead flights of both Avro Vulcan Bombers and Blackburn Buccaneer Fighters while on the ground the British Army quietly mobilized. Each day the thought of complete human annihilation weighed heavy on me as the 13 days in late October ’62 passed by.  

...then my second.

Then in 1968 at the age of 14 my younger brother and I looked after our parents as they laid in bed for 4 days incredibly sick (looking back they should have been in hospital) with the Hong Kong Flu. Each day my brother and I went home from school at lunch time and cared for our parents. We shopped for groceries, washed clothes, cooked and managed through a week until my parents were back on their feet. We had no family members close by as we had moved to Scotland in 1966 – yet my 8 year old brother and I pressed on.  That pandemic went on to kill 30,000 in the UK, 1 Million people worldwide and a possible 3 million more as it circled the globe for the following 3 years. However, this and the Cuban Missile Crisis is not what I want to dwell on – I want to tell you how I got through those almost two weeks in October and the Flu outbreak of the winter of 1968 - 69.

Sharing lessons learned...

What helped me during the Cuban Missile Crisis was the fact that I had parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents that just 20 years previously endured World War II with nightly bombing, privations/deprivations, curtailed movement and a general cessation of day-to-day life as they knew it. During the Cuban Missile Crisis they kept their entire family calm and created a feeling of solid security that felt like the warmest blanket you could imagine. They were realistic but they were battle-hardened and they kicked into high coping gear not hoarding or panicking but keeping up a sense of normalcy within boundaries which included as I recall not being able to watch the news, (off to bed at 7:30pm as they caught up with things on the BBC News at 9pm), listen to the radio or read a newspaper. They did not dwell on the fact that a third world war was possible and that armed conflict is sadly a part of human conflict. Yet they knew how to deal with it and shared with us some of the things they did in the 6 years from 1939 – 45 to cope. The biggest lesson I can share? – they kept me and others away from the known social media at the time, reassured me repeatedly, taking the opportunity to pass on coping skills to another generation and constantly remind me that we will survive and that we should always be prepared and ready for recovery when it is all over.  

... and then putting them to work.

As my brother and I faced the Hong Kong Flu pandemic of 1968-69 I remembered what I had learned from my family 6 years earlier and my own set of coping mechanisms kicked in – courage, devotion and dogged determination to quell anxiety and channel negative energy into dealing with the present but keeping a resolute eye on the future. Like World War II for my parents and grandparents through the Cuban Missile Crisis along with the Hong Kong Flu Pandemic I knew it would all pass. So today, I am letting my battle-hardened skills from 1962, 1969 and other significant personal events I have faced in the face of adversity kick in at full speed.  

You will survive and you will be better for it.

So, my point here is that there are a lot of 8 year old’s, 14 year old’s and others you love dearly that are going through the same feelings I did. They will be defined by this pandemic and they will form an incredible resilient backbone of a very different world - only if you help them now to build coping skills. They need your courage, devotion and support now. They need you to be an optimist as Winston Churchill said, “it does not seem too much use being anything else”. All (young and old) will be battle-hardened and ready for anything the future throws at you and your loved ones and it begins with knowing the sun will rise again on a new dawn and we will find ourselves better for what we went through during the Pandemic of 2020.

Stay safe,