Thoughts on Covid-19
Mar 11, 2021
Winter is officially ending with this Spring Equinox. Burgeoning life is juxtaposed with resistance and challenges — both internal and external. This year the coronavirus presents a potent challenge prevailing upon our fears, inner demons and human struggle to create connection with ourselves, other people, the world around us, and the metaphysical.
Ironically, this spring the media has popularized a new term to express the pandemic of alienation, marginalization and disenfranchisement in our world. The plague of loneliness so many people experience is highlighted in the global efforts to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. “Social distancing and “self isolation” present a particularly poignant strategy in a world of 8 billion people, at a time when we are well versed with disassociation on multiple levels in society and within ourselves. A homeopathic remedy perhaps, of “similars curing similars?” At the moment it’s seems the only strategy to “ flatten the curve of spread” —possibly at the expense of our mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. Perhaps a painful mirroring of how we’ve been living.
Forget the “world is your oyster” idea —definitely passé. Ostensibly we may now be taking our life in our hands if we go grocery shopping, go to work, go to school, the stadium, dinner out, or do anything that involves coming out of our bubble of self isolation. Of course the reverse applies. Anything which comes into our silos must also be disinfected, cleansed of the outside world and its possible threat.
Certainly what our mothers used to tell us when we were children, applies unabashedly today,”don’t touch!” Luckily we have our devices, wifi and mass media, which is germ-free (although known to be susceptible to viruses as well!) to keep us warm at night. For many of us, the current status quo is a dramatic change in lifestyle. Globetrotters have certainly been shut down and converted to armchair travellers. Even those of us who were living our everyday lives, going about our business, may find a trip to the grocery store to be a big excursion. However, for many, the struggle for survival in the midst of suffering has just been amplified.
On a psychological and deeper soul level, the collective human unconscious has manifested a global reality which belies and makes mockery of our egotistical claims to progress. Unprecedented advances in the field of technology, turbo charged by digital innovation, has created a virtually magical world. Yet, the similarities between today’s world and the human condition in the industrial revolution, 150 years ago, are stark.
While the transglobal factory owners employ millions to produce and purchase their products, almost a billion people, half of whom are children, are dying of malnutrition and hunger in both the so-called developed and undeveloped world. We still live in a world run by dualities between the ”haves and have nots,” the rich and the poor, those sick and dying of rampant, untreated diseases and those with agency and access to care. Sadly, we are not truly touched until we ourselves are affected. Paradoxically, it may take this pandemic to level the field, wake us up out of self absorption and unite the human race —if we choose.
COVID-19 has stopped the world in its escalation of an “anti human duality” at a time in human history when it’s clear that two world wars, holocausts and continuing genocides the world over have not taught us the lessons of true love and care. Continuing racism, bigotry, misogyny and human greed evidenced in the blatant disregard for our planet and all its inhabitants, had apparently reached such a fever pitch that we needed a pandemic to flatten that destructive curve.
We have been living the dystopian predictions of many such as Orwell’s 1984. In a world where sectarian and partisan agendas pit neighbours against neighbours, the world over, when the dark underbelly of our societies have been systematically exposed and opposed by movements such as “ Me Too” and” Black Lives Matter” we are compelled to stop pointing a finger at “the other out there” and look at the three fingers pointing back at our own heart. Where is our humanity?
It is time to engage in the true jihad, the internal battle against our crippling judgements, stagnant conclusions and inner demons. The struggle to attain, maintain and advance our humanity is most seriously challenged by this latest threat to our collective being. Even as we wash our hands and take all kinds of reasonable measures to ensure our physical health, what about our flagging mental health? The frightening thing about fear is that it knows no bounds when unleashed and will compel us to take the most unreasonable measures in the name of reason. The reptilian brain is still powerful in so called evolved modern humans, especially when perceived survival is at stake. The Darwinian “ survival of the fittest” mentality still exists as a dangerous undercurrent in our collective psyche. This latest test will reveal the truth of our evolutionary growth as a species.
This invisible organism named Covid-19, has halted our world in its tracks to provide a much needed course correction. The natural world responded almost instantaneously. Media reports chronicle pollution lifting to reveal the beauty of the natural world in many parts of the globe, of dolphins returned to cleaner waters in the Venetian canals, of the earth rejuvenating itself. Startling testimony that human civilizations cannot continue carelessly and unchecked on this planet any longer. We must learn to be mindful of how we choose to live our lives.
Maybe as threats to life often do, this pandemic affords us the opportunity to care not only about ourselves but our neighbours, friends, family. Maybe as we go inward and expand our capacity for appreciation of all the simple and profound things which support our lives, we can grow patience, compassion, care and even the intimacy of love and devotion. We have the opportunity now to develop our capacity as human beings— simply to be human. The old songs “all we need is love” “love is the answer” can teach us as nursery rhymes teach children, how we can live in a new way. Maybe as our busyness is halted, we can ask ourselves, if we have time enough for love?
