The pandemic burns through the world while I wipe off our deck furniture.

Italians lay out coffins while I throw in another load of laundry.

Peruvians watch as the military fill their streets while I hike up a beautiful trail to overlook the Rocky Mountains.

Refugees see fear in the eyes of their children while I send a cheery hang-in-there text to my neighbour.

 

 

If ever there was a time to recognize the random inequities of the world, it is now.

My particular genetic roulette meant I was born in Canada with lots of privilege. What if I’d been born into poverty, and was now trying to get through this pandemic with a recently cancelled minimum-wage restaurant job and no health care?

There is a popular meme floating around right now, that says,

“Your grandparents were called to war.

You are asked to sit on the couch.

You can do this!”

It’s meant to be funny and as a shift in perspective, and also too, I’m sure, as a slur to this latest ‘spoiled’ generation (funny how every generation thinks the next one is not up to speed).

But beneath that funny and caustic little meme is a deeper reality. It also encapsulates our feeling of helplessness against this invisible enemy. Even if our own relatives didn’t pick up a gun and go to the front, they were still galvanized into action; rolling bandages, assembling kits to send to the front, writing letters to homesick soldiers, collecting scrap for metal drives, in short, they took action.

Instead, all that is asked of us is to stay home, something that looks suspiciously like a whole bunch of nothing.

Is it this inability to do something concrete that feeds into my random moments of hopelessness?

When this started, I optimistically posted how I was going to take this time to write, create art, play the piano, read, and on and on it went.

It is true that I have sporadically done those things. And every day, I’ve at least made sure to get myself outside (and am ever so grateful that we can do that here with so much glorious space).

 

 

But I’ve also spent many hours scrolling down the endless Twitter headlines, reading too many news reports of the world collapsing just on the other side of our mountains.

We live here in sunshine and safety while all around us the world’s systems crash and burn. It feels surreal to see these stories from the cozy comfort of our log home. The juxtaposition of the news compared to where I sit, leaves me in this disconnected state of feeling like I’m watching an apocalyptic movie that is happening to everyone else.

Yet, I know too, that this threat, though invisible, is here. It lives among us.

It feels as though the earth, like a big dog emerging from a lake, is giving us a huge shake. Our refusal to listen, our unwillingness to curb our ravenous consumption, our ongoing degradation of the planet, has all come to an abrupt stop.

All the climate goals we thought were impossible to achieve, are suddenly happening, happening at a breakneck speed, paired with this global viral threat that has no fix. The human cost rises each and every minute.

But this sudden stopping tells us too, that this has always been within our power.  We always had the ability to change, but now our hand has been forced. The world has been too busy, rushing from here to there, like the White Rabbit always late and running to catch up to something that was just around the next corner, that elusive goal called ‘more’.

We have been brought to a screeching standstill.

 

 

 

This then, through no choice of our own, is our massive reset button. This sudden stopping has forced us to take a collective breath.

Only now, in the crashing termination of all that we know, can we truly see our scurrying for what it was, a mad attempt to cram as many check marks into our lives as possible.

And yet, it turns out, that what when the pandemic is actually upon us, what we really miss is not those check marks of busyness, but rather a longing to do the simplest of things; we want to have coffee with people we love, hug a friend, enjoy a family picnic, gather together to listen to live music or just hang out.

For now, all of those options are closed to us.

But as a result of this termination of all that we know, the skies are clearing from our non-stop air traffic, waterways are cleaner and the cruise ships have quit spewing waste into the oceans.

I wonder too, are the people of China discovering that their breathing problems have been alleviated since the closure of the coal-fired factories, so many of which were dedicated to spewing endless dollar-store gadgets and joke gifts for our consumption?

This time out of time, though forced upon us, is a time to reflect, to reassess, to take a look at our own habits. It is our opportunity to step back and realize it is incumbent upon us, in our singular isolation, to do our best for the collective good.

Like the guts of a pulled-apart computer, all of our workings are exposed. Now we see the failures in our health care systems. We expose the vulnerabilities in our transportation systems. We realize how fragile we’ve spun our wires, how tentatively we are strung together, each of us dependant on the other.

We all benefit when each of us has good health care, when each human has basic minimum standards and when the disparities of wealth are narrowed.

There will be those who refuse to play nice in this global social experiment. But for the rest of us, the majority of us, we will rise to this and ultimately, will emerge wiser and, I believe, kinder.

We have been called upon to check our me-first inclinations. Each errand, each outing must be considered in light of how it affects others. We must pay attention. We must each limit our purchases to the basics so others can have their necessities. We must only buy the items we need today, instead of filling our carts for endless tomorrows.

This pandemic is our global wake up call to remind us that we need each other to survive. COVID-19 does not recognize ethnicity, skin colour or nationality. COVID-19 is the ultimate equalizer, a brutal reminder that from the viewpoint of a virus, we are simply flesh and blood hosts necessary for its spread and survival.

 

 

Dear reader, my heart is full and I am sending love and healing thoughts directly to each of you. Right now our world is broken and there is immeasurable pain as we try to contain this invisible enemy.  We are both the destroyers and the creators in this epic production. We are being forced to try a new way of being.

Let us choose to be the good that is loosed upon the world. Let us choose to be inconvenienced each day, and know that we’re doing it for our friends, neighbours, our family and fellow beings we may never meet. Let us starve this virus from the hosts it requires.  The bravest thing we can do in this fight is to hide in our homes. That is the new call to arms.

It turns out that doing what seems like nothing…is actually a whole lot of something. In fact, it is the absolute best thing we can do.

Let us live good lives for each other. Wash your hands a ridiculous number of times each day. Spread kindness in any way that is safe and healthy. Stay home more than you think is possible.

One day soon we will all sit together and feast and talk and hug and we will appreciate it all so much more when we do.

Until then…