deeper, not faster - silver lining #12

Flying over the treetops provides you with an overview of the area and a grand perspective, but not an intricate comprehension of a forest’s ecosystem and its needs. 

In light of all the terrible repercussions of this worldwide virus pandemic, you might be getting tired of the many silver linings.  But since we already read enough bad press in the press, we may as well keep contemplating the other side of the coin here in this blog.

My husband noted that pre-pandemic he was out visiting customers and jobsites so much that it was difficult to process all the data that came in while he was out, in a meaningful way.  He was usually either up very early in the morning, or went back to his desk after dinner to catch up and handle what came in during the day.  Now that he has been home office bound for five weeks and is all caught up, he is able to engage with incoming data, our customers, our projects, and future business opportunities in a much deeper, more meaningful, and ultimately in a more sustainable way.  The pandemic slowdown will likely influence how we do business post-pandemic.  It’s better for our customers, it’s better for us.

Same old same old is exactly what we don’t need after we’re through with this.

trusting yourself - silver lining #11

How is your trust in your body and yourself?  This novel virus will likely be around for the next few years and may present us all with a unique opportunity in regard to that question.  

The Western healing model has become somewhat dogmatic, stale, and authoritative.  Meanwhile, complementary and alternative therapies have made vast inroads among those who appreciate a broader healing conversation.  With the advent of so much free information on the internet, for those who trust their judgement, intuition, and body, healing is becoming more of a cooperative effort between them and their healthcare provider.  That requires engagement, research, and trust, trust in your ability to discern what’s relevant to you, and your body and mind’s needs.

When things open back up, this exceptional situation will present us with the option to remain fearful about contact with others for the next few years until a vaccine is available, something many believe is the only way to protect them, or to approach this situation more holistically, by also strengthening your mind and body, and supporting them in doing what they’ve been made for – living in coexistence and mutual exchange with the natural world.  After all, we are part of nature, as is the virus, not apart from nature.  

I am neither belittling that this virus can be nasty, nor that we should rely on nothing but prayers, or forego handwashing and face masks to protect us from it.  Moreover, we are collectively paying with weakened immune system for the toxins and pollution we have dumped into our environment.  But cancer, for example, while not transmittable in the same way, is also a really terrible disease, and with over 600,000 cancer deaths in this country every year against the 50,000 US Covid-19 deaths, it seems that we have come to accept cancer’s prevalence in our culture. On a related point, I have been criticized for suggesting the potential merits of the Swedish approach to creating Coronavirus immunity.

Your ability to vet information, something that can be learned, and discerning rubbish from a valid piece of information even when the majority seems to veer elsewhere, takes confidence and trust.   Deciding how best to protect your body, and understanding how your body heals, takes trust.  Read an interesting and much lengthier interpretation on that in Planet Waves.  Soon enough your body will encounter this virus. Will you live in constant fear, which weakens your immune system, and makes your mind vulnerable to manipulation?  The alternative is building trust in You, your body, and your ability to navigate this new reality. 

real simple - silver lining #10

There is a magazine with that name, and now it applies to many of our lives.  Life has not only slowed, it’s also become very basic.

For those not on the frontlines, life revolves around the house – eat, drink, work, cook, kids, sleep, repeat. Everything has become simplified down to personal grooming.  No dressing up for work, make-up optional for women unless you need to get on a Zoom call (and even then you can stay in your pajama pants as long as your top looks decent).  Expenses have been stripped down to basics, income may have taken a hit.  

Celebrities, luxury goods, travel, events, and anything else that might be considered frivolous or gratuitous, have no relevance in our current pandemic world.  My eyes glide right past pictures of sunshiny exotic travel destinations on my Instagram feed.  Not relevant. Even though food, water,  electricity and internet all function normally, we’re still somehow in survival mode because our lives are anything but normal, and may not be for a while yet.   

Is back to basics such a bad thing?  Did that new pocketbook, those new shoes you had to have, that trip to Disneyland with the kids, the groomed nails that took an hour every week, the salon hair color, all those mindlessly placed Amazon orders for stuff, really make your life happy and relevant?  Will you go back to your pre-pandemic consumption patterns when it’s all over?  Will you hustle and rush as you did before?  Stuff your and your kids calendar again until you fall into bed at night exhausted?

Or will something have shifted?

a healing crisis - silver lining #9

In the last few days we’ve seen so many robins in our backyard that I actually looked up this red breasted bird’s symbolism.  

In homeopathy they speak of a healing crisis when symptoms briefly intensify before abating and disappearing.  I have been pondering if this worldwide crisis, a health pandemic with ensuing economic collapse we are all trudging through so painfully, is triggering a cultural healing crisis of sorts?  

Several symptoms of our cultural dysfunction have indeed intensified during this crisis, all of a socio-economic nature (see silver lining #5) because they are a result of our form of extreme capitalism, which is exploitative in nature, of people and of the environment.  At the same time, we have watched as nature has caught its breath and showed us how fast it can heal if extreme human activity is curtailed (see silver lining #2).  

Are we now able to see the connection between environmental deterioration and extreme capitalism? Are we now able to see the connection between a comprehensive social safety net and a robust economy?  

Lo and behold, the symbolism of the robin is “stimulation of new growth, renewal and hope.” 

we are One - silver lining #8

When pollution levels sink drastically in Beijing, Delhi, Detroit and Los Angeles as a consequence of the worldwide shutdown of human activity, we know we are One.

When our federal government hordes ventilators instead of distributing them to those states that need them the most, where you or I might need one, we know we are One.

When fear of a virus shuts down economic life on the entire planet in an effort to prevent it from spreading and overwhelming the hospitals where you or I might need to get treated, we know we are One.

When we experience that the virus cannot be prevented by a wall, but is invisible and can lurk in you and me, infect you and me, we know we are One.

When money can’t buy restaurant visits or travel because everything is shut down, when money can’t buy cleaning or nanny or hair or nail services for fear of contagion, the affluent may understand that we are One.

When the recession hits everyone, we know we’re One.

When toilet paper is unavailable to everyone, we know we are One.

When the virus makes the rich and famous as sick as everyone else, we know we’re One. 

When we see how fast nature can heal if given the chance, and how fast we can act when we must, we know we’re capable of healing our planet and our broken profit-over-people culture if we want.

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!

forced slow down - silver lining #3

The slow down came so fast.  Ten days ago, we ended a fairly normal work week by going out for burgers to a local place, although the atmosphere already felt a bit frayed.  This week much of our world has come to a standstill.  We’re in lockdown, our work has slowed and shifted, and we’re working and studying from home until further notice – timeframe uncertain and unknown.  Restaurants and bars, gyms, public events and places, and all non-essential businesses are closed.  No place to go, no money to spend, no friends to visit.  Customers don’t want to see us.  Besides, most of them are working from home as well.  Reaching one of them on his cellphone yesterday, he told us he was out walking his dog.  

If you’re in healthcare, government or education, or working in any business considered essential, such as shipping, groceries or liquor stores, you’re of course super busy to permit everyone else to stay safe or sane.  Thank you for that.

But for the rest of us, the world is all of a sudden hushed, like the big city during a snowstorm, when the sounds are muffled and nobody is out and about.  Work and life have slowed, people seem kinder, a bit more understanding. We’re all in the same boat, and there is togetherness in that. 

Usually we live such fast paced and frenetic lives, checking our phones round the clock lest we miss an important business related message for fear of not meeting someone’s equally impatient expectations.   Now we have time to catch our breath, time to walk the dog in the middle of the day, time to ratchet the frenzy down a few notches, time for the kids, time to cook a meal, time to catch up on sleep, time to ……whatever.  

During this lockdown, while homebound except for occasional grocery shopping or a few other unavoidable errands, my world has shrunk to my immediate surrounds, spending time with my nuclear family, tending to the garden or going for a walk to clear my head and gain perspective on this dystopian black swan event, or doing some homebound activities. The slow down gives me time to appreciate the simple things in life, those I brush off when life is fast, whether it’s the beauty of an emerging spring flower in the garden, my college age daughter’s unexpected presence and smile, the taste of the dinner I made, the kind and comforting phone call from a friend, or even the funny memes I find on social media that fill my life with some much needed lightness.  

How has the lockdown affected your life?  Consider looking back at earlier posts “the little things” and “what makes me happy” for a grounding perspective.  May you be well and stay healthy!