We are just a few weeks in and we are all settled into our new (temporary) reality. While the daily routine looks different for everyone, there are common threads in this human experience. Those of us who are not on the front lines of the health care crisis or the existing essential service industry find ourselves with more time at home and virtually no time running around or in transit. We cannot be in physical contact, yet it appears to me that we are more connected now than ever before. I continue to look for ways to deepen my perspective to make sense of it all and have found a particularly powerful message in the following:
“And, what if…
If we subscribe to the philosophy that life is always working out for us,
that there is an intelligence far greater than humans at work…
That all is interconnected. What If…”
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What I’m Appreciating: Our Human Experience
Earlier this week, I began the mundane process of returning my car at the end of its lease, given that the dealerships are closed. At the end of a very brief conversation, I asked the leasing representative how she was doing in light of COVID19. She choked up in her response and let me know that I was the first person to ask her that question. She told me of some of her struggles to keep it all together and shared her daily prayers. Now, more than any other time in our history, we are all dealing with the same universal crisis. Be kind to each other and know that we are all doing the best that we can. We are all in this together. Indeed, what can we learn in our collective time-out?
What I’m Learning: Virtual Connection is Vital
I knew that I was adapting to a new reality when last night’s dream consisted of being “inappropriately” dressed for one of my many daily Zoom calls. In just this past week, I have hosted and attended virtual business meetings, coaching calls, birthday parties, yoga classes, social networking and community events, Friday night services, and happy hours. I “see” my friends and family more than we did before the world turned upside down. In keeping with my intention of sparking joy, I share one of the more uplifting virtual collaborations that I have enjoyed (but did not actually participate in!).
What I’m Sharing: None of Us Are Immune
It’s going to be okay.
It really is.
We will face this situation together with love, humour and patience.
We will weep together, we will laugh together.
We will discover togetherness in our apartness.
And the worst of it will end one day.
And we will have learned so much by then.
We will now be called to face very difficult feelings inside of us.
Fear. Grief. The loss of an old way of life. Our devastated plans.
We will learn to face ourselves. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Nowhere to go except within.
A sacred quarantine.
We will learn to face our boredom. Our restlessness. The part of us that wants to be somewhere else, with someone else, doing something else, having some other experience, in some other Now, living in some other life.
We will let go of the wonderful future we had planned.
We will let the fantasy future die, release it, and grieve it.
We will return to the solidity and warmth of the present.
We will make the present into our home.
We will begin again, here, build a new house on new soil.
We will explore a new way of life.
Strange, at first. But full of possibility.
Slower. Kinder. Quieter.
We will talk to each other honestly about death, and life, and impermanence, and how we feel about all the changes that have come to us and our loved ones.
We will learn to value life a little more.
Yes, perhaps we will learn to value life a little more.
And live with our hearts cracked slightly open to the elements.
And lean into uncertainty, and find our salvation there.
None of us are immune to change.
To rupture. To the shattering of old, familiar forms.
This is the way of things, this has always been the way of things.
From this perspective, nothing has gone wrong.
Crisis simply means “turning point”, and none of us are immune from the turning.
The breaking of the old makes way for the birth of new.
It has always been this way.
Love. Humour. Patience. With these things, we will come through.
Stronger than before. Renewed. Ready.
I am sending you all my love, my friends.
❤️
– Jeff Foster
In Search of Humor
And, if all else fails, laugh.
Click here.