Benjamin Franklin said nothing is certain except death and taxes. Well I’m not sure about taxes, but death certainly appears to be a permanent feature in this physical life. I’ve been thinking a bit more about death recently, not only in the human sense but also in a more general sense; the death of a project or a business venture or a company. In Trinidad & Tobago, the Petroleum Company of Trinidad & Tobago Limited (Petrotrin) refinery recently announced its closure. Petrotrin employs thousands of workers and contractors and has been a part of the oil and gas industry in Trinidad & Tobago for decades. The economic and psychological trauma for a small nation of 1.4 million people is very real. But is it the end?
A good friend of mine gave me Tim Ferriss’ book; ‘Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World’ for my birthday last week. (Happy birthday to me! 😁). In it, Samin Nosrat is quoted as saying, “Endings don’t have to be failures, especially when you choose to end a project or shut down a business… Even the best gigs don’t last forever. Nor should they.” One morning while jogging, this quote intersected poignantly with my thoughts of Petrotrin and the economy.
I had just completed a 45-minute run in the park close to my home (I won’t mention the mileage :/) and I was warming-down with the walk back to my house. It was a beautiful morning. The sky was blue, and the foliage was lush. A neighbor was cutting his lawn and that lovely smell of freshly mowed lawn filled the air. Then I had a weird thought; the death of a whole lot of grass was giving life to thousands of plants as the mowed leaves died and rotted and formed compost that enriched the soil. I began to see all the things dying all around that were giving life to new things. Nature is very adept at recycling. In fact, the very oil that Petrotrin refines into gasoline and diesel and jet fuel consists of millions of dead prehistoric plants and animals. It was then that Nosrat’s quote came back to me and I thought about how this cycle of death and life could also be applied to a wider cross-section of life experiences.
A failed business could cause an economy to re-invent itself. A lost job could be the impetus for the birth of a businessman. Ten failed inventions are the seedbed for a hugely successful one. A school dropout could be a world changer.
Loss is painful, but I have a renewed optimism that the end of something, even something good, is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it can be a good thing as we become open to the possibilities of new births in places we would have previously overlooked. Perhaps, we would even make new discoveries of dimensions within ourselves that could only be birthed in the pain of loss.
Joyfully,
Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.