By Linda Baleta
“Cruelty, greed, and division are not new phenomena, but when the old order that institutionalized them is threatened, those who have benefited from them rise up to seize the privileges they once enjoyed without shame.”
— Rebecca Solnit, The Beginning Comes After The End
Who do you become when the structure around you begins to fall apart?
The world is changing. It always has been and always will be. The unraveling of old narratives and the weaving of new ones is ever-present. Uncertainty is not a phase, but a state. It is where these three directions intersect that we meet ourselves and others. Are monsters and heroes people, or simply behaviors that emerge in moments of uncertainty?
Rebecca Solnit’s book “The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change” stands in the space between what is ending and what has yet to take shape. Her ideas hover in this in-between state, often reminding us how easily we lose sight of the progress we have made, precisely because we have lived within it. Solnit writes of a connected world, in constant motion. As I read, I kept thinking that beginnings do not follow endings regularly, or chronologically, but rather form in fragments, often unnoticed.
In the workplace, these fragments of change emerge dramatically or simmer quietly. The role that once seemed right begins to feel distant and meaningless. A project continues, but something inside it no longer ignites. Conversations continue, while they seem to revolve around something unspoken. One era ends, another is in the making, with no clear end, no clear moment when one can say: this is where it began to lose its meaning. And yet, something has changed.
This slight change carries the weight.
This kind of transition is not like a door that is clearly visible, but a space of disorientation. The old way of understanding things or acting no longer works, but the new one has not yet been discovered. You are tempted to experience change quickly, to restore order, to find quick explanations and to continue with what you know. But the history of change is always in motion and challenges these impulses. A new beginning requires a different approach. What becomes apparent in these moments of transition is not only the change itself, but the way people react to it.
Some cling more tightly to what they know, in an attempt to maintain structure and security. Others hold back, waiting for something clearer to emerge. And some begin, almost reluctantly, to question what was previously unquestioned. These reactions may seem personal, as if each person is grappling with their own confusion. But they are more than that.
Solniti writes: “Sometimes, the truth that everything is connected has a poetic beauty. When the problem is pollution, the news of inseparability becomes a nightmare.” As if there is something unsettling about realizing that what we experience as individual insecurity is often part of a larger dynamic. Tension, silence, the need for control, moments of silent integrity or outbursts of rudeness move through systems shaped by patterns that existed long before the moment of change.
In this sense, the flu does not create anything new, it simply unfolds what was present.
It’s easy to talk about these moments in terms of “heroes” and “monsters” in the office, as if they are what make the difference. It’s more worthwhile to see heroes and monsters as manifestations of behaviors that have been shaped over time. Under pressure, certain tendencies become more apparent. Control becomes rigidity. Silence turns into complicity. Integrity can deepen into courage, and curiosity can take the form of leadership that doesn’t rely on the old and tried.
When one world ends, another tries to begin and unfolds what was broken and brings about possibilities for change, in unexpected ways. In other words, dissolution is revelation, and it is in those moments that we must remember that we do not live in isolated ends. Nothing and no one exists in isolation, in any respect, not personal, not political, not environmental, not emotional.
The workplace does not reveal who we are when everything is stable. It reveals who we become when events no longer make sense. Therefore, what we encounter in the workplace is not just the result of change, but the most sobering reflection of what has been quietly taking root all along.
