I have the lungs of an ox. What’s a little smoke in the air? We sit by dozens of campfires each summer. Let’s go, pups!
Air quality reports say don’t take your dogs for a walk today. Short potty breaks outside. The air quality health index is at 10+ this morning. When you read the data table, we’re sitting at 26 at the time of this walk to the end of my street and back.
Yesterday my daughter and I were in the car when she asked what caused these fires. I answer in half thoughts. Forest fires are a natural part of the regeneration process, and global warming, too. Is that even true?
This morning I have friends from halfway across the world asking if we’re okay. Two kilometers away, my mom and dad are tucked away in their air-conditioned home, and still, I worry about my mom’s compromised lungs.
Way up north, thousands upon thousands of trees are burning.
Trees. The closest thing I know to pure grace. They give far more than they take.
At my desk, just another workday shows up in my calendar.
Tuesday I attended a session with an economist from one of the large consulting firms. The outlook. Not great. Canada’s slowed growth isn’t a surprise. It’s been a long time coming. This started years ago. Decades even.
Until recently, it’s been very comfortable for Canada to be the shopping cart, full of resources to serve the rest of the world.
Do you know we make aluminum here, send it across the border in rolls, and buy it back as cans? For beer.
We provide the resource. Someone else creates the value.
Yesterday, I’m talking with a client, a leader in the mining industry. There is a massive shortage of young people coming into mining. If exploration is going to be a sustainable business and a solid career choice, the solution won’t come from one company. The industry has to harness its skills and solve for it together.
Also yesterday, I met the leader of a trade association for chemical distributors across Canada. Industry people volunteer on eight standing committees. Competitors, some of them, sitting in the same room to make their whole industry safer.
A few weeks ago, I referenced systems thinker Peter Senge, who observed that we focus on isolated parts of a system and then wonder why our deepest problems never get solved.
We keep treating problems as though they belong to one company. One industry. One level of government. One country.
Until a crisis reminds us otherwise.
Canada is building relationships beyond the United States. Industries that used to compete are sitting at the same table. And today, people across North America breathe the same smoke and ask the same question: how do we keep this from happening again?
Maybe everything we need to know, we learned in kindergarten.
Remember the human knot? A group of kids stands in a circle, everyone reaches across and grabs two different hands, and then you have to untangle yourselves without letting go.
You can’t solve it by pulling harder in your own direction. You have to pay attention to the whole. You have to talk. Someone bends. Someone steps over an arm. Someone else sees an opening nobody else can see.
All of this. One giant human knot. For us to work together and solve.
Way up north, thousands upon thousands of trees are burning.
We’re already holding hands. The smoke just makes it harder to pretend we aren’t.
What would happen if we learned to untangle the knot before the next crisis tightens it?
New to One Thing Thursdays?
Each week, I share something I’m learning, living, or working out in real time. It’s part storytelling, part reflection. I hope there’s something in it for you too.
Get it straight to your inbox every Thursday! Sign up for our newsletter