Yesterday I walked around the botanical gardens at 10pm crying like a madzer. At a couple of points, I properly wailed. Luckily the track was empty. Like many of us,
I’m scared. I’m fragile as a leaf. I’m losing most of my income, and all my business security. I’m worried for my loved ones who are at risk.
I have a friend on lock-down in Spain telling me to make the most of our ability to walk outside and exercise. ????
This is a crazy time to be living, and a very hard time to keep our nervous systems regulated so we don’t freak out.
If you’re freaking out, read on, I have some thoughts (and a free workshop!) that I hope will help us zoom out from the panic just slightly.
Often we get sick (any kind of sick, not just COVID-19) when we’re burning the candle at both ends.
Getting a cold or the flu is a sign from our body that something needs to give.
When we get sick it forces our whole body to slow down. At first, we fight the illness, we struggle against it, try to keep working, try to tough it out.
Then eventually we realise we’re making it worse. We don’t have the energy. So we lie down, we don’t go out, we become completely introspective.
Everything in us slows us down.
And sadly, some of our cells die as our immune system fights the illness.
Often during these times, horrible as they can be, we look at things differently.
We vow that when we get better, we’ll be so bloody grateful for feeling healthy. We vow to take care of ourselves better. We look forward to connecting with our loved ones again after a period of hibernation. And often, we come out of it with a slightly new perspective on our life.
I believe that is what will happen with this scary-ass novel coronavirus pandemic.
Imagine the whole world as one giant organism, one person. Things aren’t working.
The climate is changing too fast, we’re depleting this person’s resources, we’re driving them too hard. Something’s got to give.
Then a virus comes and slows the world down.
It starts small, a warning. A scratchy throat. One body part: China. A few hundred people.
The people don’t listen, they still continue business as normal. The virus starts to spread.
Eventually most of the body parts (of the world) have shut down and are waiting it out. Parts of the world are still fighting to keep going, still working, still struggling to fight with the virus.
But the virus continues to spread. Eventually it seems we’ll all have no choice but to slow the fuck down, go into lock down, and wait it out as best we can.
And devastatingly, just like cells in the body die when we are sick, the world is losing some of its wonderful people.
It’s so scary when it impacts people you love, people lose lives, people’s mental health deteriorates, people lose a lot of money, businesses close, the economy falters. I’m not denying any of that.
The majority of my income comes from in-person corporate workshops, almost all of which have been postponed indefinitely. I run an Airbnb that just lost ALL its bookings. And most scary of all, one of the people I love most in the world has a lung condition.
So I get it. This shit is scary and unprecedented and uncertain and anxiety provoking.
But my hope for this virus is that it makes us, as individuals and as a whole, become introspective and look at the way we’re living in the world.
Makes us reconsider our priorities. Makes us look after people, and the world above all else.
No one knows how it will turn out yet, but maybe this virus was the kick up the ass the world desperately needed.
To wake us all up and force us to pay attention to all the dumb shit we’re doing, individually and globally.
And to remind us to be grateful for our health and the health of our loved ones.
Something good always comes from something horrendous.
Right now we’re in the thick of the dust as the rubble falls around us. It will settle.
And the view will be different when it does.
