By Chris Satullo

Got to host another Mission Story Slam last Friday. Here’s the tale I told:

A bit more than five years ago, something happened that I thought would never happen. Not to me, at least.

I lost my job. The best job I’ve ever had, working with the best group I’ve ever known – though, to complete the picture, also in the most challenging environment I’ve ever experienced.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I was fired. Canned, sacked, pink-slipped, defenestrated, marched out with my stuff in a cardboard box.

It was sudden. It was traumatic. It was painful. It was unfair. And, at the age of 61, it was scary, vertiginously, dark-night-of-the soul scary.

And it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

First off, if I hadn’t left that job, I’d probably be dead now. The numbers that stare back at me each morning now as I fiddle with my do-it-at-home blood pressure monitor are concerning enough. Five more years in that job surely would have put me in stroke territory.

But it’s much more than that. The years since have proved to be among the best of my life, full of learning, of tasty challenges, of chances to be useful, of joys big and small.

Our topic tonight is What’s Next? We’ve all just endured an unprecedented year, seeded with shocks both communal and deeply personal. It’s been stressful, this time of wrenching griefs, numbing boredom, percolating anxieties and deep disappointment with some of our fellow humans. It’s been disorienting.

Now, we have a chance to emerge from the other side, to craft together a new normal. Yet some of us seem to be hesitating, clinging to lockdown, afraid to go outside, both literally and figuratively.

Some of that is inevitable. But here’s something about Americans that social psychologists tell us they see in their research –  something I also see in some friends and some students I teach. Many of us,  including some of the most comfortable and sheltered, have a kind of collective anxiety disorder. We’ve developed a habit of catastrophizing – even when there is not a genuine catastrophe like COVID. We make anxiety, fear of harm, suspicion of others, a first principle. We court “trauma,” find it around every corner, even as we demand to be protected from it. We reject any call to resilience, and we can be very judge-y about those who do not join our huddle of anxiety.

So (please, Lord) not in the mode of humble brag, but in the hope of being helpful, let me tell you about some of the great stuff that has happened for me because I was forced to endure the most traumatic moment of my work life.

The good stuff started the very night I was cashiered.  My staff and others from my now (suddenly) former organization gathered at a Center City bar to drink away the shock – and insisted Eileen and I come. The experience was like attending your own wake. A very raucous Irish wake.   People were drinking, hugging, telling stories, laughing, tearing up, cheering – all by way of letting me know that I meant something to them and they were pissed about what happened. Going on unemployment was a small price to pay for a night like that. 

The next morning I awoke with a massive, temple-pounding hangover – and the feeling that overnight an iron anvil had been surgically removed from my chest. My sense of relief exceeded my sense of “My God, what’s next? How will we pay the bills?”

About six weeks later, our first grandchild was born. With nothing but free time, I was able to savor fully that extraordinary joy, along with being able to be there  – even at 3 a.m. – to help Brian’s frazzled, dazzled parents navigate those first, overwhelming weeks of parenthood.

I had – and took – the time to think about what I wanted to be when I grew up. In tension were two deeply rooted elements of my identity: being a journalist and being a Philadelphian. I had to decide which was more important to me. Baby Brian made that one easy; no way was I moving us hundreds of miles away from that little bugger just so I could plop down in another dysfunctional newsroom for a few more years. I would find a way to cobble together a living in the city we loved, near the people we love most.

Eileen was a tremendous boon – not only because she was infinitely patient, supportive, loving and wise. Thanks to her job at CHOP, she also had gold-plated health coverage. Never underestimate how vital and buoying such a safety net can be  – and how vulnerable its absence leaves millions of Americans.

As a kept man, with my wife’s bennies protecting me, my situation proved more tenable than it is for others who lose jobs. I needed work and income, but not a job. Doing the work I’d done as a journalist in one town for 25 years, I knew lots of people who run things. My firing had been, somehow, Sunday page 1 news in the Inquirer. So, in the coming weeks, when I would call some of those people, they knew why.

 So, on each call, the first thing out of my mouth was, “Want you to know, I don’t need a job. Just checking whether there’s some work you need done where I could be of help.” The sighs of relief on the other end of the call were audible.

I’d chosen Philly over journalism, but the next few months were a happy confirmation of a suspicion I’d long held. A lifetime in newsrooms teaches you some useful skills– how to be omnivorously curious,  how to ask questions and dig up hidden facts, how to note your biases and keep them out of the work, how to read people and situations, how to render what you’ve learned in clear, structured prose. As I’d suspected, these skills really are valued more in the outside world – where they can be in short supply – than inside the news business – where just about everyone has them in spades.

So, long story short, over the last five years, I’ve been able to cobble together all the work I could want as a consultant as well as an executive coach. (Yes, oddly, being fired but surviving it apparently makes one somewhat desirable as a coach).  

I’ve had the chance to help reinvigorate a lagging public radio station. To help get a small but meaningful law passed in in New Jersey. To help a business school, a public university, an airport and a cemetery grapple with their challenges. I’ve crisscrossed my state, rousing and equipping people to fight the gerrymander. I got to work with my good friend Clare Robertson-Kraft, who taught me so much about strategic planning and data-informed leadership that I wish I’d known when I was in that damn, wonderful job I got fired from.

And I’ve had plenty of time to hold Brian – and his little brother – in my arms and rock them to sleep. To take long walks and bike rides all around Philadelphia with my wife. To pop outside to a grab a coffee and read a good book on a sunny day. To be in a comedic play and host story slams. To work on shrinking my golf handicap, which stubbornly resists my efforts.

I’ve been extraordinarily lucky, I know. And after a year of loss, grief and pain for so many, any hint of gloating about that would be contemptible. I’m telling this tale only because I hope it provides some evidence for this piece of wisdom from that old baseball sage, Branch Rickey, who said long ago: Luck is the residue of design.

Yeah, you can see catastrophe around every corner and live in a defensive crouch. Far better, though, to build up your resilience and learn to find luck and opportunity inside of challenges both personal and communal. No, there’s no foolproof protection against calamity. People sometimes do fall without a net. People have died, so many, too many in the last year.

But we, the lucky ones who somehow get to survive, we owe our neighbors more than to retreat into that crouch. We need to be resilient and a little brave, to go out there and do something bold and useful with our luck.

Luck is the residue of design.  As we ponder what’s next, I’d urge you, I’d beg you – start planning and training really hard to be lucky.

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Note: In last week’s piece, in a classic brain cramp, I referred to Liz Cheney, the embattled member of Congress, as Lynne. That, of course, is the name of Liz’ mother. Needless to say, I regret the error, even though it was swiftly corrected. 

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Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia