VUCA
Generally, I don’t continue watching a web series further, if I fall asleep in the first episode. That's what happened with me while watching ‘Stranger things’ a couple of years back 😊
Some of my friends continued to recommend me (highly) to give it another shot but I would ignore their advice.
Some 3-4 months back, announcement of the last season created a lot of buzz. Somehow it motivated me to give the series one more chance & this time I was completely hooked. I managed to complete watching the entire series couple of weeks back & I think it was one of the best OTT shows that I have enjoyed in recent times.
Right from the Season 1, I have loved watching the character development of El on-screen (also known as Eleven/011/Jane). The way she emotes her feelings about her surroundings (without speaking much) is simply amazing.
She is shown as an ‘enhanced’ human with immense psychokinetic and telepathic abilities, primarily centered on telekinesis—the power to move, manipulate, or destroy objects and living creatures with her mind.
Towards the end of Season 3, she loses all these superpowers in a battle & is reduced to becoming a ‘normal’ human being. She starts getting bullied by other students, because she cannot fight back the way she used to earlier. She has no other skill to survive in an unfriendly atmosphere so she continues to suffer.
She (thankfully) gets all her superpowers back towards the middle of Season 4 & then she is back to what she does best – telekinesis.
I was deeply moved by El’s disbelief in accepting loss of her superpowers & her subsequent inability to cope with the surroundings.
The reason she suffers so much in't just the loss of her powers; it is that her identity was earlier tied entirely to her save-the-world type usefulness.
In Season 1–3, she is "The Solution."
In Season 4, she becomes just some "Jane," and she had no clue about how to be a normal-nobody.
I felt that the creators were showing our own reflections through her struggles.
It reminded me of a WhatsApp forward, that I saw some years back.
‘Video-shooting from the sky’ never used to be everybody’s cup of tea in the past. The ability to fly a helicopter in various weather conditions (often rough) or the ability to maneuver a bulky camera seamlessly while just being connected to the helicopter via a single safety belt was nothing short of a superskill.
Alas … the invention of drones completely altered the future of aerial photo/video-graphy !
In no time, those highly-skilled people were out of job.
Sadly, the market rewards efficiency & ease-of-use over everything else.
Drones are cheaper, are getting better & better in technological features, are available 24X7, are designed weather-proof, don’t fall sick or take a day off unlike humans.
No wonder, the pilot & cameraman lost their jobs fast to the drones.
We are living in a VUCA world (Volatile-Uncertain-Complex-Ambiguous) where -
a pandemic brings an entire world to standstill
a seemingly far-off technology suddenly comes into hands of millions of people, potentially rewriting the future of jobs
global supply chains are disrupted by sudden wars, etc.
VUCA world events can abruptly make some people unemployable, despite their earlier ‘perceived’ great skills (their superpowers).
Survival in VUCA world is more about embracing better adaptability & imbibing a constant Learning mindset.
Do you feel content with your present skills?
Are you regularly adding value to your job / business with your current skills today?
Are your skills in-line with what the market would need in the near future?
If answer to any of these questions is no then it’s time to wake up, isn’t it?
Due to the story arc, creators of ‘Stranger things’ had no option but to give back all the super-powers to El in subsequent episodes.
We are not so lucky in real life …