A Thinking System

Yesterday I found myself sitting with a question that would not leave me.

Not politics.
Not technology.
Not even war.

Something quieter.

How does an ordinary person wake up in a world that has changed?

Imagine going to sleep with the confidence that tomorrow will look like yesterday. The same streets. The same body. The same work. The same people. The same understanding of yourself.

Then morning comes.

And something has shifted.

The building may still be standing. The economy may still be moving. The calendar may still say Monday or Tuesday.

But inside you, the world is no longer arranged in the same way.

That is the part of change I cannot stop thinking about.

Not the headline.
Not the policy.
Not the technology itself.

The human mind after the shock.

What do people do when yesterday’s explanation is no longer enough? How do they rebuild meaning when the world they trusted begins to move under their feet?

I used to think I was studying Generative AI in organisations. I still am. But increasingly, I realise I am studying something older and deeper than AI.

I am studying how people make sense of change.

A new technology arrives in a workplace. A war begins. A person migrates. A job changes. A relationship ends. A diagnosis comes. A child leaves home. A country changes direction. A dream collapses. A new one begins.

Different events. Same human question:

What does this mean for my life now?

I think about this even in ordinary moments.

I remember once being in an Uber, laughing as I usually do, and the driver looked at me with curiosity. He asked how I could be so happy. Didn’t I have problems?

I smiled.

Of course I had problems. Many. But I had also learnt that laughter can be a vantage point. Not denial. Not pretending. A vantage point.

Sometimes joy is not the absence of pain. Sometimes joy is the decision not to let pain become the only narrator of your life.

Maybe that is also sensemaking.

We do not only live through events. We interpret them. We attach meaning to them. We carry history into them. We decide, slowly and imperfectly, whether what has happened will become a wound, a warning, a lesson, a beginning, or a reason to stop.

This is why change is never only external.

If you go to the gym, the body changes because of repeated commitment. Not one dramatic session. Not one motivational speech. Repetition. Resistance. Recovery. Again and again.

The mind is not so different.

There is no app for becoming.
There is no shortcut for courage.
There is no download button for transformation.

You develop it.

You develop the mindset.
You develop the language.
You develop the ability to stand inside uncertainty and still ask: what can I learn here?

That is where my research and my life keep meeting.

In my doctoral work, I am interested in how employees experience Generative AI when it enters organisations with history, routines, traditions and assumptions. Two people may receive the same training, use the same tool and follow the same policy, yet interpret it differently.

One may see support.
Another may see threat.
One may see learning.
Another may feel strain.

The technology is the same, but the meaning is not.

And maybe this is true far beyond technology.

People do not respond only to what happens. They respond to what they believe it means.

That is why history matters. Organisational history. Personal history. National history. Family history. The quiet history of things we survived but rarely explain.

History shapes expectation. Expectation shapes interpretation. Interpretation shapes response.

So when I say I am interested in change, I do not mean change as a slogan. I mean the human labour of adjusting to a new reality.

The trembling moment when someone realises: I cannot use yesterday’s map for today’s road.

That moment matters.

It matters in organisations.
It matters in communities.
It matters in war.
It matters in migration.
It matters in grief.
It matters in ambition.
It matters in becoming.

I come from a place where I once wrote that I wanted my words to cross the sea. Today, someone can read them from another country, another room, another life. That still amazes me.

So I am learning to leave a trail.

Not because I have arrived.
Not because it is easy.
Not because I have everything figured out.

But because I am here.

Working. Studying. Failing sometimes. Trying again. Speaking with my accent. Carrying my history. Building my voice. Making sense of change as change is also making something of me.

Maybe that is the real research story.

Not just what I study.

But what studying is doing to me.

So I ask you the question I am still asking myself:

When the world changes, what meaning will you give it?

And when tomorrow no longer looks like yesterday, who will you become?

Reflection: This week reminded me that change is not only something we experience; it is something we interpret. I am learning to pay attention to the meanings people create when life, work or technology shifts. That is where my research, writing and becoming continue to meet.