our new heroes - silver lining #7

Celebrities may be adulated during normal times when the economy is whirring, when people can buy their merchandise, go to their events, or enjoy their pretty pictures on Instagram.  But now?

In this time of crisis, when we’re all dealing with our mental sanity in social isolation, are cooking three meals a day, entertaining younger children or facilitating older children’s online schoolwork, all while attempting to work from the kitchen counter or dining table in a stupefying intensification of home life, nobody is interested in celebrities anymore.  They have nothing much to contribute in this instance.  Some of them have been lambasted for touting their escapes to fancy second homes.  Others tell us to do something with our free time we’ve always wanted to do, like write a book or meditate.  Seriously?  

Our new heroes are the people on the frontlines of this worldwide health crisis – the nurses, doctors and medical staff, the delivery people and postal workers, grocery store employees and transit drivers, the farmers and shipping clerks, but also the teachers and professors who have hastily had to switch to online teaching to hold the education system together.  All of them together maintain a hobbling semblance of society while most of the rest of the world either recovers from the virus or lies low at home out of harm’s way.  

Our new heroes are the real people who are essential to our communities and without who we would literally fall into anarchy.  Maybe it’s time to recognize that they deserve higher wages, better job security, comprehensive health insurance and sick leave policy, and in general a good social safety net.  Will this virus become the great equalizer?  

the human touch - silver lining #6

We can learn by example or by lack.  Growing up in a household where food was important, where we always ate homecooked meals and my parents entertained a lot, this culture imprinted itself on me.  I learned by example.  Growing up in a family where love was inferred, not so much expressed in words or by physical touch, I learned through lack.  I hug my children a lot, and I always tell them that I love them.   

Our world has become exponentially more virtual in our homebound little Corona world than it had already been before this crisis, now that so many of us study and work and meet virtually.  We conduct business via Zoom, partake in online exercise classes and museum tours, see our doctors via TeleMedicine, and organize virtual cocktail hours with friends.  

Temporarily that may be acceptable, useful and even necessary.  However, often after a crisis certain social changes don’t revert back to the way they were before (and that may be an opportunity for conscious change). Think of the increased surveillance, paranoia and airport security after 9/11.  It never really left us.  

Post Covid-19 we really need to be aware of this.  Screen relationships, meetings, consultations, workshops, and classes lack something essential.  They lack not only touch but also direct eye-to-eye contact.  Have you noticed that you can never look a person directly in the eyes on Zoom or Skype or Facetime?  The satisfaction of meeting someone for a cup of coffee, of getting together for a glass of wine or dinner with friends, celebrating holidays with your extended family over a wonderful meal, just cannot be replicated virtually. 

Because Covid-19 prevention precautions demand social distancing, the take-away could easily become that we must fear human contact because of potential pathogen transmission and that a virtual existence is safer.  This crisis is teaching me by lack how crucial personal touchy feely eye-to-eye in-person contact is to my emotional wellbeing and general satisfaction with life.   We have increasingly become fearful of life (see a previous post- live a little - on that).  Life itself is not totally safe as we must interact with people, pathogens, plants, animals, the air, the machines we create and travel in, lest we become emotional robots housed inside and existing in a virtual world.  And in the end we still all die no matter what.

How do you want to live the rest of your life after this virus crisis is over?  Your choice is to get back out into the world or live a virtual shadow of a life.  Feeling safe requires strengthening your own inner resources, your immune system, your mind, your body.   Will you live in fear or in love, with people or without?  This crisis is an opportunity to question how far we wish to take the virtualization of this experience we call life.

big realization - silver lining #5

Flattening the curve is the effort to extend the lockdown period to ease the strain on the healthcare system and save more lives.  However, this effort results in a longer economic lock-up because we all need to stay home for a longer period of time to protect ourselves and others from becoming infected.  

The big quandary governments across the world are grappling with in this worldwide health crisis is the fine line between valuing each individual life and the need to protect their economies.  Each one of them is coming up with its own slightly different version.  Governor Cuomo famously said, ”My mother is not expendable,” to make a point about his highest value, each human life.

Here in the US, the Corona pandemic raises the question how the most vulnerable among us, those without health insurance, those without sick leave, those who lost their service jobs right away and have no savings, those whose children are home from school but work on the frontlines,  will survive this crisis.  And with it goes the question how valuable we would find their services if they were sick and gone?  Destitute and gone?   Dead and gone?  What would we do without delivery services, cleaning personnel, restaurant waiters, and all the other many service providers that make our economy go round and round?

Will this health crisis break the camel’s back? Will people realize that universal healthcare is a pretty smart idea? That a social safety net is better for everybody? 

Does your government have your back, or is it throwing you under the bus?  Does your government favor corporations at the expense of your life and wellbeing? Does your government tell you “to eat cake” when you say “I don’t have bread,” as out-of-touch Marie-Antoinette told her destitute population before the French Revolution?  What’s the highest value of the people you elected?  

a better diet? - silver lining #4

From observing where the shelves at the supermarkets have been empty, people have been stocking up on ice cream, chips, dried and canned beans, rice and pasta, meat, and toilet paper of course. The produce sections are always fully stocked!  

Leafy greens, lots of vegetables, less meat, raw fresh salads, not much sugar and baked goods, has generally been a generic recipe for good health.  

The big message here is that what’s actually available is what’s healthiest to eat.  We have heard from up high that there is no disruption in the food distribution chain.  Relax and shop and eat your fill.  And maybe, just maybe, shift your eating habits to that which is not only available in abundance but also healthier, and which boosts your immune system.

Sorry, I can’t help you with the toilet paper.  No silver lining there if you’re out, although there is no shortage of water.  Perhaps we can save some trees in the long run.

Be well and stay healthy!

environmental wake-up - silver lining #2

As a result of the world’s cessation of polluting activities in reaction to the Coronavirus pandemic, Beijing’s pollution levels have drastically dropped and the waters in Venice’s canals are markedly cleaner.  

Along those lines is a post from climate activist Greta Thunberg’s Facebook page about the unintended proof to ourselves that we, as inhabitants of one planet, are capable of coming together in a massive effort  when the motivation and will are there.  

from Greta Thunberg’s Facebook page

Could a shake-up out of our inertia towards climate change and all the other related environmental quagmires become an unintended but much needed side effect of the worldwide virus pandemic?   

moving mountains - silver lining #1

This is the first of several posts examining the silver lining underneath the worldwide Corona virus crisis, and there are many as you will see over the next posts.  

This virus, came out of nowhere - they call it a black swan event. in December it appeared in China and barely three months later it has engulfed the entire world. The public’s reaction, and the many governments’ actions, demonstrate what an enormous motivator fear is.  But the effects and repercussions demonstrate the enormity of what we can achieve when we all come together as a human species with one common goal.   

We have been paralyzed by the sheer size of the many problems our planet and species is currently experiencing. The specter of climate change with its innumerable subproblems has been around for how long??????????????   Somehow we have to be hit over the head by nature in order to spring into action.  Well, this virus clearly did that, and this crisis is showing us all how fast we can act when we come together as inhabitants of one planet with one common goal.  No mountain is too high, no crisis too complex.  

Let’s tackle climate change next.  

viral thoughts

·      Beijing’s pollution levels are way down.

·      The administration, and the public, will need to acknowledge the validity of science.

·      People are pulling together during difficult times.

·      Be proactive instead of reactive – boost immune system, don’t panic, eat better, get enough sleep, gain perspective (you won’t die, but the world economy will suffer).

·      Consider alternative treatment methods such as antiviral essential oils, we currently have no foolproof treatment method for this virus.

·      We learn how globally connected we are. Physical walls don’t protect us, the virus is coming in via boat and plane.

·      Our immune systems get to practice on new challenges.

·      China bans trade and consumption of wild animals (although not sure how much this will really do, but the awareness of the damage and cruelty of the pangolin and other wild animal trade is rising).

·      Age of transparency – China, Japan, and US leaders are being rebuked for sweeping the importance of this outbreak under the rug, and it’s blowing up in their faces.

·      Virus takes hold in acidic body chemistry environment.  Mmmmhhhh, that means cutting out sugar, starch (potatoes, rice), white flour (pasta, baked goods, pizza, waffles), and eat way less meat.. This is not a new message, these food items, eaten in excess as in the SAD Diet, also cause diabetes, heart disease, inflammation, and possibly promote cancer.  Eat your veggies!

the biggest movement you never heard of

Renewable energies have become very common, everyone talks about organics and goes shopping at farmers markets, and Andrew Yang’s thing was a universal basic income.  If you’re no vegan yourself you surely have several friends who are, and the MeToo Movement and the Weinberg trial are bringing about  a truer conversation about what women’s equality actually means.  But did you know that they all belong to the same bigger conversation, an actual cultural and consciousness shift that bakes them all together under a huge umbrella?

It may be the biggest movement you never heard of.  Ray and Anderson, authors of the 2000 book The Cultural Creatives, called it the “emergence of an entire subculture of Americans (and Europeans, and Japanese, as they point out).  “Because Cultural Creatives are not yet aware of themselves as a collective body, they do not recognize how powerful their voices could be.”  That was 20 years ago, and it seems that they/we are still not aware of how big of a body of change agents they/we collectively are.

Where do you think the sudden rise of a social-democratic movement in this country came from, and Bernie Sanders’ appeal in 2016 and now again?  The self-awareness and passion of this younger generation, other than the young Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg who already has plenty,  still needs to mature into true activism for change out of self-awareness.  But it’s bubbling up everywhere. It’s encouraging,  but it also rattles an older, more conservative generation that’s apprehensive about change.  

See more posts on this cultural shift – on the incoming Aquarian energy, on Modern Monetary Theory, on new right brain culture, and on the crack in the story, among many more you’ll find in my blog archive.

May you see this new story emerging with excitement, and may you be as inspired as I am.

we are soooo connected

The interesting thing about nationalism, borders, walls and NIMBY thinking (not in my backyard) is that their resurgence is happening at the same time as worldwide events shake us up to the realization that in the end we’re all connected across national borders as inhabitants of one shared planet.

Heavy petroleum use for energy production, transportation and industrial agricultural practices, ongoing deforestation, industrialized meat production, and single-use plastic consumption all contribute to pollution and climate change in a major way, not just where they originate, but worldwide.  

While the coronavirus is for the time being mainly a health concern in its country of origin, Chinese manufacturing is slowing down because Chinese workers are staying home under quarantine, and that affects economies worldwide.  

The Ethiopian Nile Dam that is supposed to bring one of the poorest countries in the world some much needed economic relief, is at the same time threatening water supply, farming viability and livelihood for the one hundred million Egyptians living downstream.

Borders and walls are physical representations of a limiting belief system.   Until we expand our consciousness, we will build walls, transport our garbage and recyclables to other countries, exit climate agreements, and send refugees back.  Change begins with you and me.

untethered

Without interrupting her tasks, my mother-in-law used to walk around her kitchen while calling people, tethered to the wall phone by a very very long cord.  As a teenager I used to sit on a stool in our hallway, trying to have a private conversation with my friends from the one central house phone that was plugged in around the corner in the living room.

Wireless and Bluetooth technology free us of those kinds of physical hardwired constraints, free us to take our cellphone and private (or public) conversation anywhere – in the closet, the garden, the street, the car, the subway.  The connecting is invisible.

Are we perhaps evolving away from such physical connections because our in-the-past-so-physical interpretation of the world is beginning to shift?  That thought intrigues me.    Telepathy and distant healing, reiki and other energy modalities, intent and the powers of creative visualization, all happen in the non-physical realm.  Are they any less real than our wireless cellphone connections or Bluetooth speaker transmissions? Does wireless technology perhaps signal the acceptance that the invisible is as real as the visible?