The last time I saw a movie in a theater had been almost three years ago. Yesterday, finally, my wife and I returned to the theater for our favorite five buck Tuesday date. We sat, at the edge of our seats, through Top Gun Maverick. It felt good. It felt normal, almost. Remember when this whole Covid-19 thing was going to inconvenience us for a few weeks, maybe a few months at most?

Here we are two and a half years later. Some things are back to normal. Some aren’t. Some might never be. I could say the world has changed, and many will profess that very sentiment, but the truth is we changed. We have changed the way we do so many things. We have changed the processes. Many of us have changed the way we socialize, where we socialize. Most of us have come through this with a different outlook. For some, more positive. For others, more negative.

The pandemic has challenged our perception of freedom. It has made some of us demand our rights, while sadly, being willing to suppress the rights of others. We have always seemed to be a divided nation, but the pandemic seemed to push us even further apart. It seemed to focus our anger and then the isolation seemed to cause us to direct that anger outward, and often at the wrong people.

We have so many issues to deal with as a nation. Equal rights, not just for a few but for everyone, black or white, male or female, gay or straight. Climate change, whether you want to call it global warming or just admit that the climate is in fact being changed by our very behavior, our insatiable desire for everything fast and convenient, for our unwillingness to pay the price of doing it right. For common sense gun laws to protect us from ourselves. And please don’t tell me its the bad guys that have all the guns even as you tell teachers to arm themselves against the next potential attack. Why are we not dealing with these issues? Why are we at the very least, still dragging our feet. How has Congress become so isolated from the reality of who it is they are supposed to represent. When did it become only about the party and the money it took to get them elected? When did they forget that they are supposed to represent us? When did we all get so distracted?

I will not blame everything that’s wrong on the pandemic. It only focused things in an all too often negative light. I will also not blame a lone individual for everything that doesn’t work out my way. I will leave that last one to politicians and their political ads that attack and blame while offering no solutions or the plans needed to implement them. I will, however, hold people responsible for their actions, whether they directly impacted it through their involvement or just incited it by their rhetoric.

The solutions to our nation’s problems, our world’s problem, start with our own actions. If we want equality for all, then let’s start treating each other as equals. Let’s see the person, not their color, their sex, or their religion. And if we want to slow down or maybe even one day stop global climate change, then let’s each agree to do our part. Recycle, reuse, maybe pay a little more for products made with our environment’s well-being in mind. Let’s do business with businesses that take steps to protect the environment. And let’s speak with our votes. If the candidate is living in reality denial, has no solutions, is unwilling to compromise for the good of the nation, for us, then we vote them out. We are far more powerful than we think. And when we act together, we can become a force for change.

It might have been serendipitous that the first movie I saw after that long pandemic break, was one chock full of testosterone, speed, and comradery, but it seems it was the nudge I needed to break out of my latest episode of writer’s block. Just one more step toward normal.

I have had three careers in my life. Each time I had the opportunity to change, I took it. I moved from classroom teacher to business entrepreneur to personal planner. Now I admit that each career had aspects that were very similar, but they were still changes that I decided to embrace. In each and every case, though there was risk involved, the end result moved my families well being forward. In 2017, I retired, sort of. It was not long before I found myself volunteering for an organization that allowed me to mentor other entrepreneurs as they tried to change their business ideas into functioning businesses.

Then in March of 2020, COVID-19 entered our lives and caused some of the greatest change we have had to face in recent times. From my perspective as a business mentor, I had a front row seat to observing businesses as they were forced to adapt to a new way of delivering their products and service. They not only had to change once, in some cases they had to make multiple adaptations as the pandemic held on, let up, and roared back. The pandemic we thought would last three months, now sits poised to enter its third year.

What the pandemic has reaffirmed is not only our ability to adapt, but also our perseverance and yes, our stubbornness. We, as a collective, have a great capacity for making and accepting change. As a country, we also have a tendency to be stubborn. Too often, when change is thrust upon us, some would choose to dig in their heels and refuse to accept it, or at the very least, take the responsibility to do their part to facilitate the necessary change.

I could go down the rabbit hole here and talk about some of the divisive issues that have come out of or because of the pandemic, but I would be trying to change the minds of the stubborn element of our society. I would rather point out the great ability of businesses to adapt to what we all now refer to as our new normal. I would point out how restaurants, who by the way were forced to make the greatest adaptations, overnight switched from in service dining to takeout. But it wasn’t just takeout, it had to be done curb side or by contactless delivery. Others added outside dining to their service and even found ways to continue that well into the fall and in some cases, through the winter. No small task. And then there were the retail sellers who, suddenly finding their indoor capacity reduced or even eliminated as they were forced to close their doors, either created or greatly increased their on-line services. The list goes on as doctors found ways to offer telemedical appointments and virtually every business went to some form of virtual meetings, appointments, and conferences. In short, they adapted the resources available to adjust to new business systems.

Unless you were in hibernation during the last two years, I haven’t told you anything you didn’t likely already observe for yourself. So let me tell you about three businesses I was mentoring and the changes they made to survive and to actually thrive. The first was a retail store. When the pandemic first struck, they were forced to close their doors to the public. Overnight, they rapidly increased their on-line store and added additional products to their website catalogue. But their adaptation didn’t stop there. When they were allowed to reopen to their customers, albeit in very limited store capacity, they went to a boutique model and began scheduling shopping appointments. When last I checked, they were having a record year in sales.

My second business was a real estate agency, who was, prior to the pandemic, in the process of forming her own real estate team. When the pandemic made it obvious that business could not be done in the usual way, she adapted overnight to virtual showings and closings and not only went ahead with her plan to build a team, but thanks to her ability to be adaptive, has realized great success and can now facilitate even more clients in more creative ways.

My final business story, amazed me the most, in that I worried about her business more than any other. She had just started her business assisting clients in decluttering their homes. Her model was to go to the clients home and through a methodical process, categorize their possessions, identify those that needed to go, and then reorganize what remained. When COVID struck, I worried about how her business would survive. When I contacted her, she told me how worried she was at first and then decided she would try a virtual appointment. The client would pile up the clutter from a particular room and my business owner would, on screen, sort the clutter into multiple piles and gradually eliminate the unnecessary from the possible next to go and eventually the pile that would stay but be reorganized. It turns out that doing the process online was less threatening to the client than having the business owner actually come into their home. She received more referrals going forward and her business survived and thrived.

The point of this whole blog is that change is inevitable. It was a pandemic this time, but what will it be next time. Businesses adapt or die. Because they know this, the promising businesses plan ahead. In every case, businesses that want to survive, have found ways to continue in manners that keep the public safe. It is individuals that struggle far more. We resist change until there is no other choice than to accept it. It is obvious that the pandemic has changed our life styles over the last two years. The reality, is that many of the ways we did things will not return. We simply must adapt. Many have done their part. Others, have not. I felt that there was no better time to press my point than on New Year’s Day when every year we are offered a reset. I intend to not only accept change, but to embrace it and do what I can to facilitate it. I will do what I need to keep people around me safe by being conscious of their well being, even when that requires a little sacrifice on my part. And finally, by doing my part, I will look forward to 2022 being a little better than 2021 and a lot better than 2020.