{Stranger Than Fiction}: Healing in the Time of COVID

What if this time was meant to be a social reset, as well as a physical reset?

What if (didn’t your mother tell you?) our natural human state is to be open, to be connected to each other?

What if our rigidly high standards, our relentless striving, our mindlessly rushing around to DO IT ALL and HAVE IT ALL have subtly, yet profoundly, disconnected us from each other? (Stop measuring)

We feel this truth, deep in our collective unconscious. It’s endemic, our disconnection.

We see this disconnection in social norms: subtly, or openly, teaching our children to always strive for something bigger, better (never enough), that it will be rewarding to achieve more than, to somehow outdo the next person. (Tell me, why does this always leave us feeling so empty?)

We see this disconnection in political rhetoric. (Do as I say, not as I do)

We see it in mass outrage, in the protests of our time. People demanding to be SEEN. Valued. Equal. (Do unto others . . .)

We see it in people flocking to the outdoors, to absorb the natural world and its rhythms in ways they’d deprived themselves of before, because they were “too busy.” (Breathe it in)

We see it in people creating art, who had “never had time” to create art before. Suddenly people are (at last) sitting down to Write That Book. Teaching themselves to play an instrument. Painting rocks in bright, happy colors and leaving them for others to find, to allow lightness to find a way into a dark, trying time. (Be a light in the dark)

Creating connections. As Art does so well.

Resets are hard. Resets are painful. Resets are uncomfortable.

But— something has been missing. (Don’t look away.)

What if — while the Earth heals itself
We were meant to heal each other?