Greenlight Startup Inc.

Surviving In the Year of COVID-19

It is 2020 and the world has entered the Coronavirus Age – a period when an organism small enough to fit in the eye of a sewing needle made a planet of 7.7 billion people shudder and grind their economies to a virtual standstill. The COVID-19 pandemic is a grandiose play unfolding in three acts. In Act I, world governments order their citizens to shelter-in-place, promoting public techniques like “social distancing”, closing borders, and shutting down whole industries to slow the communal spread and not overwhelm the hospitals. This has already begun. Act II will reveal the deepening economic abyss – deep recession, record stock market losses, mass job layoffs, widespread loan defaults, and implosion of the health insurance industry. But Act III is the most profound part as we learn what it means to be connected to almost everyone on Earth, yet physically isolated from the ones we love with no end in sight.

But there is hope.

Okay, I had to set the zeitgeist for one of the most transformative periods in human history. This moment reminds me of the US Marine Boot Camp “Crucible” training – a concept I used to mentor startup founders – where each new recruit must face and overcome obstacles that seem insurmountable under high stress, with limited resources and diminished energy. I’m a Black Gen Xer who experienced a different kind of “social distance” for decades based on my own racial insecurity in the workplace. In the midst of a global pandemic, as my generation is turning ‘50’ I realized something: people of all ages -- Baby Boomers, Millennials, and Generation Z -- are all part of a new generation of disruption, separation, and uncertainty. We are all recruits in the same Boot Camp and must work together and care about each other in order to survive the greatest crucible of our time and make it out on the other side.

The ominous grip of COVID-19 is a global equalizer by impacting people from every race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, political ideology, and socio-economic level. This is why this book is more important now than ever before; each author is conveying their inspirational story of triumph in the hope that you will find something in common with that experience and find the strength to persevere. Regardless of our backgrounds, we are all sharing the most universal bond – the instinct to survive and protect our loved ones – and this human need is nurturing our collective spirit, fortifying our resolve, building up our emotional resiliency. As many of us are self-quarantining and sheltering in place, we are all looking at our world through the window and blocked from the human interaction we have previously taken for granted.

 ...