I recently read Thank You for Being Late by Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, and I let out a long breath of relief. It shed light on why I have been feeling out of sync lately. He writes about how we are living through one of the greatest inflection points in history, possibly unequaled since Gutenberg launched the printing revolution in Europe, paving the way for the Reformation.
I don’t know about you, but many of my friends, mostly baby boomers like me, are feeling unmoored, overwhelmed, and unsteady. The world feels upside down. Something is happening.
Every day we wake up to news of something more unbelievable than the day before. ... It's unsettling and sensational, even traumatizing. Political commentator and writer Carl Bernstein calls it 24-hour screaming.
We are not a delicate generation, we boomers. We survived the pains of our fathers and mothers who lived in constant fear of the Great Depression. We enjoyed the prosperity and hope of the 1950s. Then, assassinations rocked our world. The Viet Nam War, free love and Woodstock, and globalization all added to our wild and complex life. But this is different.
Every day we wake up to news of something more unbelievable than the day before. The evening news is now called “Breaking News.” Ticker tape feeds at the bottom of the television screen scream for our attention. It's unsettling and sensational, even traumatizing. Political commentator and writer Carl Bernstein calls it 24-hour screaming.
It feels to me like it started when we turned the calendar and entered the 21st century. Technology advances are amazing. But newer, better, and faster means we are accessible 24/7. Cell phones and four-pound notebook computers allow us to send text messages, e-mail, send documents, make calls, dictate messages, record conversations, take photographs, all while keeping up with the news, and tethering us to our jobs. We work from home, the airport, coffee shop, and bed. We hear about people who sleep three or four hours a night, often working sixty and seventy hours a week. For me, the lines between work and home started to blur and disappear.
For me, coming to a TMI program is not a luxury. It is a necessity. I need to learn how to maneuver in this new era.
Recently, I hit the Pause Button. It occurred to me that I need to stop and try to make sense of what is happening in the world. And I need to process what is important to me. I have not been enjoying the changing seasons in my beautiful mountain town. I haven’t really looked at the world in its beauty because it is drowned out by the noise, nor am I enjoying what life offers. Instead, I am overwhelmed, confused, worried, and angry. So I’m going to take another TMI program. I need a safe space to think and process what’s going on, and to gain a perspective on how I want to respond to the new age we are in. There isn’t a better place for this than TMI.
Lin Wells, who teaches strategy at the National Defense University, said that there are three ways of thinking about a problem: “inside the box," “outside the box," and “where there is no box.” TMI gives us a safe space “where there is no box.” For me, coming to a TMI program is not a luxury. It is a necessity. I need to learn how to maneuver in this new era. So I, for one, will be putting TMI on my priority list for 2018. I want to process my latest unmooring “outside the box” at TMI.
Even though four decades have passed since the Institute started, the tools are still powerful. When you are feeling unmoored, overwhelmed, and unsteady in the world, I hope you will give a gift to yourself of a TMI residential program, and join a community of like-minded people on a journey to understand, learn, and access a higher consciousness.
Expand your awareness "where this is no box."
Choose your next Monroe Institute program.