Part of The Chronicle of Pattern Recognition…

On Disruption, Without Rush

CarMax, Layoffs, and the Space Between

Layoffs are often discussed in terms of outcomes.
Numbers. Efficiency. Market signals.

What’s harder to talk about
is the moment itself.

The quiet shock.
The loss of rhythm.
The sudden unmooring of identity from routine.

For many people, disruption doesn’t arrive as a lesson.
It arrives as an interruption—
before meaning has time to form.

There’s a tendency, especially in professional spaces,
to rush toward framing.
To reach for optimism.
To talk about “what’s next” before acknowledging what just ended.

But presence matters here.

Taking a moment to recognize what was built.
The work that mattered.
The relationships that formed.
The dignity of people whose contributions don’t disappear
just because a role does.

Not every transition needs to be immediately resolved.
Not every ending needs to be repurposed on arrival.

Sometimes the most human response
is simply to acknowledge
that something real has shifted.

No reframing yet.
No pressure to extract meaning.
No insistence on momentum.

Just space.

Because disruption, when it arrives,
deserves to be seen
before it’s optimized.