Candid Conversations Newsletter: Resilience, Obedience & Alignment

“Those who feel it know.”

I struggled to find the right words for this week’s edition. As I began to write, my heart felt heavy, burdened by memories from decades ago, triggered by live images and news broadcasts.

It was September 12, 1988. I was in the third grade. It wasn’t your typical September Monday morning; there was no school, but it wasn’t a holiday either. The evening before, the skies had turned a deep, blood-orange hue, so strange that people said they had never seen anything like it. By sunrise, our biggest fear came to fruition. We learned Hurricane Gilbert was making landfall, a Category 3 storm with sustained winds up to 125 mph, and we were in its direct path. It was projected to be the worst in more than fifty years.

I remember watching one side of our house collapse after the roof from our neighbor’s building struck it like a projectile.
Eighty percent of homes lost their roofs. Banana crops were decimated. There was no electricity, no water, and hardly any supplies for months. What remained was the sound of survival, the unspoken understanding that life would never be quite the same again.

Echoes of Destruction 🌪️

And this past Tuesday, history repeated itself.
Jamaica’s worst nightmare returned with unjustifiable vengeance. Hurricane Melissa, a Category 5 storm with winds up to 185 mph, made landfall, leaving destruction in its path. The death toll rises daily. Families are homeless. Over a million people are without power. The southwest coast now resembles a World War II war zone. 

Recovery will take years, and for some, the loss will be permanent.

Yet, amid the devastation, I see something unbreakable: resilience.
People are sweeping, salvaging, and rebuilding from the rubble. Their voices rise in gratitude:

“It could be worse. Wi still alive.”

The Weight of Awe 🙌🏽

In moments like these, I think of the psalmist David, who wrote:

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them?

David stood in awe, small before creation yet aware of the divine gift of presence, direction, and purpose. It is a reminder that humility and authority can coexist, and that reverence for life is itself an act of alignment, though hard to see in moments like these.

The Price of Progress💰

Over the past few decades, we have witnessed remarkable technological growth, with innovations ranging from mobile phones that fit in our palms to electric cars that drive themselves, and and now artificial intelligence powered by advanced GPU chips made from rare minerals. But with this progress has come imbalance. Hurricanes form outside their seasons, temperatures soar, coastlines erode, and rainfall intensifies.

Scientific evidence suggests that climate-change-driven warming increases the risk of more intense hurricanes. The Caribbean, with its vast coastlines and ocean-dependent economies, remains among the world’s most vulnerable zones, bearing the brunt of rising sea temperatures and shifting weather patterns. Environmental degradation through mining and deforestation, though often distant from these shores, is part of a broader interplay between human systems, ecology, and climate, an intricate web of cause and consequence that binds us all.

The West sneezes; the Caribbean catches the flu.

The Earth Responds 🌎

With every action, there is an opposite reaction.
Maybe that is what we are seeing now, an Earth responding to our extraction and consumption. The mining and consumption of bauxite, cobalt, gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and tungsten leave environmental scars that ripple outward, especially across regions like ours.

The sad truth is, we are all complicit.
As I write this on my cobalt-powered iPhone, I recognize my own contradiction. Yet, it is through this same device that I was able to reach loved ones during and after the storm. Such is the tension of our age, where convenience and conscience coexist uneasily.

So where do we draw the line?
Where do we strike the balance?

What We Choose to Protect 🫂

We are inevitably living in a new era, one that demands both innovation and introspection. And while technology evolves, we must remember that the greatest resource of any nation is its people.

Let us protect them.
Let us protect the land and the waters that sustain us.

Because if resilience is our inheritance,  then alignment must be our offering.

Who will answer the call?

Jamaica is calling, and we must answer. She has given the world much and asked for nothing in return.

👉 Support Jamaica’s Recovery

Something to Think About 🤔

Maybe obedience is not submission, but alignment.
Not the slow surrender of will, but perhaps a conscious choice to move in rhythm with what sustains life.

I once read a column by a writer I admired for his candor. In it, he compared the Earth to the human body and its ability to fight off viruses through its immune system, through the coordinated work of T-cells, antibodies, and other defenses. 

Humanity, he argued, has become the Earth’s virus, and at some point, she will defend herself.

 A sobering thought, even if fictional.

Nonetheless, she requires balance.

And if we care for her, she, in return, will care for us.

What can I do? 💬

We start with something as simple as picking up our own garbage, and, more immediately, by giving what we can to help those rebuilding after the storm.

And if nothing else, by sharing this post with as many people as we possibly can.

👉 Support Jamaica’s Recovery

Today for me. Tomorrow for You.