On Christmas Day I woke up deaf in one ear. No warning. No gradual degradation. Just silence. The experience mirrors what happens in cybersecurity when sensors fail. The lesson is uncomfortable but clear: when visibility is gone, hesitation is the real threat.
The servers hum softly this cold Christmas night, while alerts blink like stars in a dashboard of light. A consultant leans back, takes a sip of his tea, and hopes every control maps to NIST, ISO, NIS2-cleanly.
Those of us who have been in IT for a while often say it was better before. Not because we miss floppy disks or Windows 3.1, but because we see a fundamental difference in how knowledge was built and used. We had to learn the basics in a way that created deep understanding. That kind of understanding risks being lost in a time when AI, automation, and abstraction allow people to jump straight to the result.
Most conflicts start in the space between what someone did and what we think they meant. Our brains fill blanks with worst-case motives. That reflex kept our ancestors alive. Today it drains us.
"Snälltolka" breaks that loop. It's a Swedish word that means interpreting someone's actions generously. Not blind trust. Not naivety. Just choosing not to build hostile narratives without evidence.
I was writing about how good we have it. A simple reflection. Nothing more. Then the thought turned inward and landed somewhere I didn’t expect. I started questioning whether the love I give my kids also makes life harder for them. Not because love is wrong. Not because I doubt it. But because their path will never look like the one I grew up imagining.
Sometimes I wonder when it happened. When consulting stopped being about solving problems and turned into selling time. When curiosity was replaced by sales targets. When advice became product. When relationships became strategy. Somewhere along the way, the craft disappeared.
It shows everywhere. Meetings filled with talk about rates, not value. Decks that promise more than they understand. Sales cultures hiding behind words like partnership, transformation, and innovation. The reality is simpler: it is not partnership, it is expansion. One consultant earns trust, and then more arrive. Not because the customer needs them, but because the model demands it. The more consultants in the room, the better the quarter looks.
We like to think history teaches us. That every mistake leaves a mark deep enough to make us wiser next time. But I’m starting to doubt that. Watching the world today, in politics, in business, and in our own lives, I see the same pattern repeating: pride blocks learning, ideology blinds reason, and ego drives us toward collapse. This isn’t a rant. It’s an observation. Maybe even a confession. Because I see it everywhere, in leaders, in companies and in myself.
Disagreements at work are inevitable. You and your coworkers see things differently because you come from different backgrounds, have different experiences, and operate in different areas of expertise. That diversity is what makes a team valuable. But it also creates friction. At some point, someone will be wrong—factually, logically, or practically. The real question is not whether you correct them. The real question is how you do it.
I log out. Or at least I try. The home office makes work close, accessible, but also harder to leave. When I close the laptop, it’s not like leaving an office. It’s more like leaving a room where the work keeps echoing.
There is something unsettling about how normal everything feels right now. I sit at the kitchen table with my morning coffee, scrolling through the news. A ransomware attack on Miljödata cripples hundreds of Swedish municipalities. A Russian deepfake campaign targets Germany’s chancellor. Moldova’s president warns of Russian hybrid warfare before the election. The U.S. steps back from efforts to fight disinformation from China and Iran. And all of it drifts past like weather while I wonder if I should buy milk on the way home from work. Maybe that is the most frightening part. Not that it happens, but how quickly we get used to it.