Greek Marbles Glisten Through 2021 Light

Got any reasons to be optimistic for 2021?

A recent collage in London broadsheet The Telegraph (subscription req’d though) surely the template for many a salesteam, or even company-wide, slot at a kick-off conference as this new year begins.

The idea being to canvas forty “luminaries” on how for them, a Springtime approaches.

Apart from the terrific idea of asking colleagues for a sentence, slide or submission on why they feel grounds for (business and all-round) optimism about 2021 (especially as a precursor to a year-launch kick-off style video call session), I gratefully noted with interest a pair of Greek-formed treasures.

Author Matt Haig brought to mind a foundational solution sell wisdom. Namely, that it is not the change itself you propose, but the perception of its personal affect on/for someone that counts.

His angle cited Ancient Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus;

“it’s not what happens to you but how you react to it that matters”.

He concludes;

“… my reason for hope in 2021 … [is] a new sense of stoicism and survival and embrace of uncertainty. Just as volcanic ash creates the most fertile soil, so it is that the most intense times often lead to the most growth. Without the dark, stars have no way to shine. And next year, whatever light emerges will be there to dazzle us.”

Will you too dazzle?

Later in the same piece, classicist Natalie Haynes said of 2021;

“It feels quite promising to me”.

Predicting ‘an Athens-style flourishing’:

“… I am hoping for an artistic flourishing similar to that after the plague of Athens in 430-425 BC. Euripides wrote Hippolytus in 428 BC: imagine that in a plague year! There was an incredible rush of theatre after the plague. That’s the thing I’m hoping for, I suppose: that Covid doesn’t stop people from being inspired.”

For ‘artistic’ why not also read whichever commercial endeavour you bang the drum for?

What happened in Greece 2,500 years ago can be matched in 2,500 hours time. By the time these equivalent 100 days travel, most of the vulnerable in many countries hardest hit by coronavirus may well have been protected by inoculation.

A shift may well be sensed.

Surely a time for hope to inspire once more.

How are you readying for your own enterprise to grow from 2020’s intensity?