Have you ever been in a situation where—despite all your best efforts—some circumstance completely beyond your control crept into your carefully constructed reality, changing things for the worse, or even just forcing you to take some action that hadn’t anticipated?
Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Jeff Schmaltz
I got to thinking about this as a general phenomenon this morning upon seeing this item that shows that half of the aerosols—particulate matter in the air—over the U.S. comes from…other countries! There are many contributors to the general class of aerosols, including soot from biomass burning, sulfuric acid, and more; over 87% of those in question in this report are simply dust.
For the purposes of this discussion, that doesn’t matter: The fact is that whatever is contributing to the aerosol load over the U.S. doesn’t come from here, and there’s not a thing we can do about it. Yet, it is still encumbent upon us to deal with it.
I think it safe to assume that we’ve all been affected by this general phenomenon.
Questions: What kinds of impacts have you, your actions, and/or your plans felt from circumstances beyond your control? Can you prepare yourself for unforeseen circumstances? How do (or can) you prepare for “unknown unknowns”?