Tale of Two Cities: Paris and Mecca

The Paradox of Coming vs. Staying Alive

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Onto the topic du jour…

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In the past few weeks we’ve seen a couple of instances of a particular paradox: namely how to balance Coming Alive in a world of unlimited possibilities vs. Staying Alive in a world of increasing emergencies.

Both the Muslim Hajj in Mecca and the Summer Olympics in Paris are telling us something similar, if we know what we’re looking for.

Let’s quickly define terms and then jump into the current events.

Two curves are intersecting right now—we can call them the Coming Alive arc and the Staying Alive arc.

The Coming Alive arc starts on the bottom left and curves happily up and to the right.

It’s all about personal and cultural fulfillment, and the possibilities that get so much airtime at TED and on #InspoTok.

If life were a picnic at the beach, this curve would include what to pack, who to invite, and where to unfurl your blanket for the best view possible.

The Staying Alive arc’s not nearly so rosy.

It starts high up on the left and plummets downward as it moves across the graph.

If life were a picnic at the beach, this curve would include noticing the water getting sucked out to sea, watching all the animals fleeing to higher ground, and possibly checking your blaring phone to read the tsunami warning.

Coming Alive is timeless, optimistic, and focused on maximizing choices—savoring the world.

This could include everything from living your personal #bestlife to envisioning a post-racial egalitarian world of fully-automated luxury gay space communism for everyone.

Staying Alive is time-bound, pessimistic, and focused on dwindling choices—saving the world.

This might include everything from double-checking what passports you have, to wondering whether to stash your cash in fiat or crypto, to maybe taking that firearms class, or prepping for a Mad Max meltdown.

As E. B. White, the author of the children’s classic Charlotte’s Web, once reflected,

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

But then I realized that in a way, the savoring has to come first, for it there was nothing left to savor, there would be nothing worth saving.”

Right now, we seem to be caught smack-dab at their intersection.

(And that can make it hard to plan our days).

Just this past month, we’ve seen real-time expressions of precisely this tension.

Only these examples have been happening at opposite ends of the political and cultural spectrum.

The first was this news bit in the NYT reporting that heading into the Paris Olympics, athletes from wealthy countries are bringing their own A/C units with them.

Bedrooms in the Olympic Village near Paris lack amenities, but the United States and other countries are having air conditioning added to their athletes’ rooms.Credit...Thibault Camus/Associated Press

Why?

Because in its efforts to be the greenest, lowest carbon footprint Olympics ever, the host country France opted not to air condition the Athletes’ Village.

Reasonable decision given Paris is largely A/C free and summers there are historically mild.

Except for the pesky fact of “unseasonably warm” temperatures lately.

(how long before that expression forever loses its usefulness?)

So we have all seven of the G8 countries (minus the sweaty host country) opting to bring in portable units so their athletes can rock the Huberman biohacker approved 68 deg F for optimal napping.

Which, ironically, is going to blow the carbon budget of Athletes’ Village and will end up burning more electricity than if France had built in some well-insulated solar powered heat pump cooling in the first place!

Coming Alive: 68 degrees high performance sleep hygiene for peak athletics and a shot at Olympic gold.

Staying Alive: swinging and missing on a low carbon Olympics in the midst of a heat wave caused by that very same carbon combustion.

And here’s a crazy stat that I just saw today–due to pesky thermodynamics rules, an increase in air temperature from 96 deg F to 100 deg F results in a 42% spike in energy costs!

Now imagine what happens when things go from 96F to 120F!

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Next up, we got the sad news that over 1500 pilgrims to the Hajj in Mecca died this month from daytime temperatures in excess of 125 degrees.

Now, Mecca in the summer’s always been a hotbox, but this was extra extra hot.

Combined with a bunch of folks sneaking in under tourist visas (rather than the more formal pilgrim applications) the Saudi hosting system broke down and folks were dropping in the streets.

Coming Alive: completing one of the central pilgrimages of the Muslim faith, and inching closer to eternal salvation.

Staying Alive: avoiding heat stroke amongst crowds of millions of people in a desert furnace.

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These two examples couldn’t be culturally further apart.

The Olympics after all, are one of the clearest symbols of the modern world order.

They serve, through the miracle of sport to remind us of our shared humanity, and to bring us together and across borders to compete and connect.

(all of this is ‘in theory'. If you read about bribes for host cities, doping scandals, and infinitely petty politics, the IOC sounds a bit more like FIFA IRL).

And the Paris 2024 Olympics are running up against what’s best for the individual athlete (cold nights) and what’s best for the host country or even the planet (lower carbon consumption).

In contrast, the Hajj is a symbol of traditional religiosity in its purest form–the Holy Pilgrimage. And for observant Muslims, the prize goes well beyond a gold medal, to eternal salvation itself.

But the Saudis are also struggling to provide “safety” during a mid-summer spectacle in the Arabian desert.

While both of the examples this month happen to hinge on summertime temperatures, in reality, there’s an almost limitless number of ways this Coming Alive vs. Staying Alive paradox will keep popping up.

Take my hometown of Austin, Texas.

In the Coming Alive bucket, we’re building a rad new Kelly Slater Wave Pool that will pump out the sweetest 7’ glassy barrels this side of the North Shore. Truly a dream to ride, and it will be one of the purest Flow state stoke machines on the planet.

(it will be another 2 feet taller than this one in Lemore for those keeping score)

And…in the Staying Alive bucket, the Edwards Aquifer which fuels most of Central Texas’ record growth is dropping like a rock, spring fed rivers are drying up, and downstream rice farmers near Houston are on water restrictions.

Or consider food security in any cosmopolitan city:

Coming Alive: farm to table organic groovy restaurants and the next hip gastro trend.

Staying Alive: scrounging enough healthy calories in food deserts to feed kids (often in the same city as those groovy restaurants)

You can take any domain, from personal growth to finance, to physical security to political stability, and you’d see similar trends. Limitless possibility on one hand, limited tradeoffs on the other.

This is a pattern that we’re likely to see a lot more of:

Increasing cognitive dissonance as we find ourselves whipsawing between dreaming our dreams and battening down the hatches.

But perhaps we can return to ol’ E.B. White and his conclusion that, in fact, the savoring of this weird, wild, wonderful life must come first.

Because if there was nothing left to savor, there’d be nothing worth saving.

Which reminds me of something that theologian (and mentor to MLK) Howard Thurman once wrote:

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go and do that. Because what the world really needs, is more of us to come alive.

So if you find yourself torn between the Coming Alive of infinite possibilities, and the Staying Alive of triage and tradeoffs, take comfort that the savoring cannot and should not be reduced to simple indulgence, hedonism or escape.

To savor the world, in however a fragile state it is, becomes an almost holy duty:

It gives us the inspiration to truly come alive.

And it galvanizes our courage to stay alive–

Long enough (and strong enough) to protect all those things worth savoring.

And if you’re curious about honing your own storytelling, consider yourself invited to join our first ever Flow for Writers and Speakers program this Fall.