I watched what I felt was a beautiful video clip yesterday.
Five minutes later, I found it really disturbing.
Drenched in emotion and laced with haunting background music, its premise was: ‘Thank you, Coronavirus for potentially making us better human beings’
Thank you – to a deadly virus that is devasting humanity and threatening to destroy our economies?
Sorry. I’m not there yet.
Although I agree with the sentiment that our experience of the Coronavirus can potentially serve to catapult us into a New Reality that is long overdue, it’s way too soon to give COVID-19 any credit for the breakthrough.
Hopefully, when this crisis is all over, we will commit to living a more balanced life in a more humane world, where we take better care of ourselves and cherish our relationships with others.
Admittedly, as the video declared, we needed a wake-up call. Our blatant disregard for the health of our planet, the rights of minorities and the dignity of the human spirit would not be tolerated forever by whatever Divine Force lies beyond.
History warned us of that. But we chose to turn a blind eye.
Probably because we were living under such self-inflicted stress that even if we had realized in time the seriousness of our problems, we didn’t have the energy to do much about them.
So, ‘something’ happened.
A crack became a chasm.
Our worst nightmare occurred.
A virus became a pandemic.
And it wasn’t just a movie anymore.
The best our leaders can do now is what Napoleon Bonaparte is quoted as saying:
‘In times of uncertainty, define reality and provide hope.’
Reality doesn’t need much defining. The daily news is devastating. Heart-wrenching human suffering is visible everywhere. The prognosis for the global economy is grim – at least in the short to medium term.
But here we are.
Instead of being grateful for the virus and berating ourselves for our sinful behavior (we’ll get to that later, for sure) we now need to pull ourselves together and fight back.
This virus is not done with us yet. It’s still clawing its way around our communities, sending tens of thousands to the hospital and terrifying the rest of us.
So, we need to see it for what it is right now.
A menace, not a savior.
What comes out of this will depend on our ability to acknowledge our failings in preserving our planet and the deeper levels of our humanity.
We can save ourselves – on an individual and collective basis – by taking on board the lessons that this crisis has taught us and by sharing our resources while we reboot ourselves.
It is telling that Napoleon spoke of the importance of hope.
Hope is what drives the human spirit. So that’s what we need now, along with all the medical expertise, equipment and supplies to defeat the virus.
Hope allows us to aspire to a better future. To stay strong, take good care of ourselves and help others through the crisis.
This crisis has reminded us that we are all interconnected. And that creates complexity.
But it also allows us to turn our hope into a vision for a better world, where ‘I’ and ‘me’ transcend into ‘we’ and ‘us’.
An Isle Of Us® – a better world – together.
I Love Us