The Awakening of Adonis John William Waterhouse 1900 Crisis and change. The one begets the other. This is how things evolve. It's a curse when you want to hold on to something good, and a blessing when an untenable situation gives way. The word “crisis” comes from the Greek krisis which means turning point, the point that Hippocrates thought was decisive to one’s surviving or succumbing to an illness. Crisis is the harbinger of a cure whether that cure is life or death. An existential crisis is essentially creative in that it can give rise to a more concerted engagement with a bad situation, as a quest for its resolution or for salvation. Sometimes it culminates in a conversion or rebirth. Sometimes, though, a bad situation just stagnates, giving rise to that oppressive sense of being "stuck” (like a baby whose head is engaged but cannot descend into the birth canal). It is a dire predicament in which the parties involved, instead of feeling a sense of urgency or cris...