In ten to twenty years from now, we will look back at 2020 as a turning point in world history.
We will remember the virus that created a global pandemic, where countries closed their borders, travel stopped, restaurants closed, and physical contact or group gatherings became taboo. We will remember it as the year we social-distanced instead of social networked, and we emptied grocery shelves in preparation for self-quarantines. And for businesses, it will be a memory of learning fast how to adapt or collapse.
Mostly though, we will remember it as a pivotal point that we as a global community made a choice – to unite or to divide.
To believe in or to fall to fear, to live or to die.
The future is always a result of present choices. I can guarantee that savvy investors and businesses have already marked the opportunities they can leverage from this chaos. I am certain powers of influence have already strategized their survival and continued claim of authority. And I can be sure that governments, while doing their part to respond adequately to this crisis, are also discreetly finding the advantage public fear affords to push forward unpopular reforms and radical new laws.
The question is what are the rest of us planning and choosing?
We can simply react to circumstance and take no ownership of our individual power to create massive change in our own lives and in turn the lives of those around us. Or, we can see the gaping vulnerability of our wellness and health and choose to become proactive in our self-care rather than reactive. We can choose to see whom and what we give power to over our lives and reclaim that sovereignty by committing to personal growth, development and learning to empower ourselves.
We can choose to take this forced pause from work and school and routines to sit quietly and rest, reset, and reflect on our priorities.
We can come together in support and remember we are stronger and survive when united, but die alone when divided.
This moment in history will be significant regardless of what you choose, but your choice today will determine the world you live in tomorrow.
I often share in my Heart Talks or with coaching clients, that you can predict the future by the seeds you plant today. It is easy to blindly and unconsciously plant seeds of fear, doubt, insecurity…and unfortunately those will sprout and grow trees that fruit the same fear, doubt, and insecurity.
What a powerful action to CHOOSE what we plant, when we know the quality of the fruit will always match the quality of the seed.
So, I invite you then to choose to plant hope, compassion, unity, sustainability, health, love, security, joy, and happiness. I know it seems a silly act to focus on security and hope when things seem so hopelessly unsure. And yet, the seed you plant is the fruit you bare. If we do not make the choice to plant better seeds, we will only repeat the harvest that has caused us this great despair.
My hope is that we will look back at 2020, and remember more than mad hoarding of toilet paper and fear of contagion, but that we will reminisce of a turning point in humanity.
My hope is that as we walk barefoot in the future grass of city parks beneath clean blue skies, taking a deep breath in with healthy lungs that we will look back with pride, that together, in the midst of a global pandemic, we decided to base our future not on the avoidance or familiarity of our past, but on the desire for a better condition moving forward.
And together, even sitting separated and isolated in our homes, we started planting seeds in the fertile soil of our hearts and let those sprout into actions of kindness, compassion, and community.
Let us mark this year as a turning point, a significant moment, in which we make a choice to live better, stronger, more freely in our hearts and connections, and that we opened our minds to the power we have when planting seeds for the future of humanity.