How to Not Crack Up in Crazy Times

In the Crack-Up—as good a title for these times as any—F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote:

“…the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

Here are two such opposing ideas we are challenged to hold today:

1. We are dangerously close to societal and environmental collapse. The powers that be are accelerating that process. And even though many good people are fighting the good fight, many of us would agree, in the words of the Magic 8 Ball, “Outlook not so good.” Plus, most of us are flat-out exhausted.
   

2. Hope is essential. Good things can emerge from terrible ones when we respond with courage, creativity, and compassion. Or as the Buddhist teaching says, the Lotus flower blooms most beautifully from the deepest and thickest mud. So, we must, in the words of Churchill, “Never give in. Never, never, never, never…”

Ah, yes. But how do we hold both seeming truths?

When facing financial pressures, the emotional strain of navigating excessive uncertainty, or the difficulties of achieving clarity of purpose and direction when everything is turned upside down, this can be deeply challenging.

And there are, to be sure, no simple solutions.

I know because I’ve tried. Many times, in many ways, for many years, while trying to find my own way through our mixed-up world with the help of hundreds of excellent teachers and role models.

What I’ve learned is that, rather than any mere hack (which feels increasingly clueless given what we’re up against), it is more helpful to focus on a personal and collective process of learning how to rise to outsized challenges.

This is how we reignite the capacity to make the world a better place after the cataclysmic shocks of 2025.

After decades of study, I have distilled my learnings about what helps people rise to great challenges into what I call the Savor the World framework.

Why focus on savor rather than save? As the illustration suggests:

1. The drive to save the world ultimately leads to a sense of strain that depletes us. This is true in ordinary circumstances. In extraordinary ones like today’s, it is even more pronounced.

2. Depleted people need time to recover and find a healthier way to move forward. This is where many of us are at right now.

3. Finally, we recommit to making the world a better place, but not based on the drive to “save the world” because we know where that leads. Rather, my invitation is to do so based on a mindset of savoring the world.
   
   This means opening up to its many wonders and possibilities, and then extending those positive feelings. This, as a growing body of research attests, makes us more, not less, capable of doing what the world needs from us, and doing so in a sustainable way.

More specifically, the Savor the World framework is based on nine discrete skills, ranging from grounding ourselves to reclaiming our agency in the world as it is. For teams and organizations, it leads to greater alignment, conviction, and mobilization.

But strange as this is to say, being a lover of words as I am, the true power in this framework is in the experience of coming together, in person or online, and sharing in an open-minded, open-hearted way about the process of moving from today’s sense of strain and depletion to recovery and a mindset of savoring that will help us do what we wanted to do in the first place: make the world a better, brighter place.

After all, the first step in reigniting our capacity involves grounding, and one of the best ways to do that is in the company of other good people doing hard things in tough times.