At age three, my daughter was a skilled Zen teacher. During one of my lessons, she was trying to fight back pooping after three days of willful negotiation. As we both found, we can only attempt to manage pooping, we can’t actually control it.
As humans, we learn we can manage nature and over time confuse that management with control. We believe our will is all powerful, and we ignore universal laws. We dismiss the data. We hold tightly (pun intended) to our beliefs.
I’m not so sure my daughter’s belief about her powers over poop are all that different than a climate change denier’s powers over data. Or the business owner’s willful resistance to shifting trends as they cling to beliefs no longer supported by data.
Nature is always evolving, markets shifting, expanding, contracting. So we, too, must always be evolving by listening, watching, measuring and, perhaps most importantly, being honest with ourselves. If we don’t, well, I hope there’s a bathroom nearby.
Also published on Medium.