Ore

Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. 

The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace.

The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.
-Charles Colton

I'm in the energy industry. Am. Was? It's hard to tell these days. Everyone, it seems, is out of work. I'm no exception. The oil company came down in March, cited falling oil prices and failing wells, and pulled the funding for the project I contracted. Not a problem, usually, only every other company was pulling plugs, too, and there were no other jobs around to get plugged into.

That was March. There's still no sign of work out there anywhere.

This is my second career. The first was reporting- I worked for ABC and CBS and other lettered affiliates and chased down stories and lived to be on the air. This oil and gas consulting came next. Long story about that transition. But here I am, at 36, coming to the realization that in today's economic free-fall we must all adapt or die.

But there's hope. The more I understand of the past, the more evident it's become that adversity produces. Hard times beget new ventures. It's all in what we make of it.

So I just finished packing my office, storing the tables and chairs and cabinets and files (what you see above was half of my little consulting business), and telling myself that it's okay... that God has a plan... and that I am not alone in this. ... ...

You know what ore is? Ore is a rock that has good stuff, profitable stuff, embedded in it. But ore isn't worth much unprocessed. It has to leave its environment, undergo extreme pressure, and watch itself be separated into waste rock and precious minerals. Then it's valuable. Then it's precious. 

I wonder if sometimes we aren't that processing or recently-processed ore. We're hating the transformation even as it's doing something fantastic to us. Or else we're processed, two halves of a former whole, and wanting our ore back together... identifying with the bulk of the waste rock while regarding that precious bit as insignificant. Or worse yet, despising the glittering, priceless treasure that came about because of the excruciating process.

Point is: yes, times are getting tough. The economy is failing. Jobs are scarce and necessities are expensive. Our country is hardly recognizable. And yet... and yet... what we're witnessing here- and in ourselves- is the process of adversity producing. Of staggering transformation. Of a separating of the highest order. And if we're willing to let it, this could be the best, most beautifully beneficial, time of our lives.

We're in this together, bright lightning bolts and purest ore friends. We're in this together. -Brin