The insightful concept of the human capacity for pre-imagining grief comes from the rightly famous poem by the American poet, Wendell Berry.

The poem — and the book that contains it — is called The Peace of Wild Things. It is just eleven lines long. It tells of him lying awake at night, fearing dire outcomes for the future lives of himself and his children. He gets up from his bed before dawn to:

“go lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

Who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief.”

Covid 19 is sadly taxing most of our lives with forethought of grief. Unlike wild things, which think only of the here and now, and have no concept of the future, we fill our thoughts — especially at night — with prefiguring bad — and sad — outcomes for ourselves and our families.

Our thinking becomes fixed around potential negative outcomes. Frozen in the grief we conjure up from these anxious imaginings, we cannot even escape into the great outdoors, like Berry does. Lockdown deprives most of us even of the calming influence of nature.

It struck home with me because earlier this year (pre-Covi19) I managed to complete a book on agile thinking, and how to break out of fixed or paralysed states of mind into an agile present.

I should have included this element of the poem as an example of how anxiety can induce disabling states of mind that need to be guarded against. And how a disciplined agility can help you escape it.

The book is published tomorrow. I hope it’s an interesting read for those looking for something to ponder https://thedobook.co/products/do-agile-futureproof-your-mindset-stay-grounded https://amzn.to/2W2lotc