Under Pressure!

One of my all-time favourite songs is the exceptional piece of music art “Under Pressure” by the unforgettable David Bowie and Freddy Mercury. Best – and absolutely recommendable – is the live version from 1992 at Wembley with Annie Lennox duetting along with Bowie. The song circles around the theme that pressure can create immense hardship and marks the reason for this pressure in “it’s the terror of knowing what this world is about”.

Ok – this is lyrical. But what has it got to do with us today? Don’t we feel under immense pressure these days with all these changes coming up to us at the perceived speed of light? Digitization, decarbonization, Corona-induced restrictions? Isn’t life tumbling upside down for some of us and challenges all of us with what we need to do and change in order to make things right for the future? Aren’t we sometimes captured by the impression that everything revolves so fast that we doubt being able to satisfy all those requirements? This is ourselves – under pressure!

So how should we react? Certainly not in panic! But certainly not reluctant as well!

Let’s be intelligent, determined and active! Certainly, the world and our lives will look different in some years’ time, but will it be worse? Honestly, we don’t know – still many assume it. Our built-in risk-aversity let us assume that there is much more risk of losing something in times of change than gaining something from this change. By the way – we are the same people who envy the rich guy who we defame for having gotten rich only because he had taken benefit from some disruption that had taken place.

So let’s get the best of us together and get going. Let’s shape our future rather than sit and wait till somebody else does it – or even for bad luck to rule our fate. Time is ticking. What are the last lines of Bowie’s song?

“This is our last dance
This is ourselves – under pressure”

Yours truly

Matthias Mersmann

PS: More recommendable from the same artist …