Silver Linings: Mark Taylor

“We are the silver lining in any and every dark cloud we could ever find. There is no need to go looking for the light when you bring it with you.” -Tyler Knott Gregson

TDN Intern Katie Ritz polled a series of industry members to see if they had found anything good that has come out of the current crisis. Their responses will appear every day in the TDN. To submit your own, email suefinley@thetdn.com

MARK TAYLOR

Here is my silver lining: I feel like the coronavirus and its forced social distancing has in some ways triggered a reset of our world in a positive way. Before social distancing, I felt like the world had lost much of its ability to listen to one another. The Twitter culture had sucked everyone into sound bite communication with a clever hash tag. Depth of listening and sincere empathy were on the endangered species list of human virtues.

I feel like we are slowing down, taking a deep breath and engaging in deeper communication. A few examples of this are less vitriol on social media (it's not gone, but it has diminished), more families out walking together, more friends calling and having actual conversations, more generosity, more empathy, and less judging.

These are anecdotal observations, but they are real. There is still a great amount of suffering to come. We have no idea what the future holds. My hope is that we will continue to see kindness, generosity, and sincere communication multiply as this situation unfolds.