Nobody is going to make this easy for us once on the other side of this life-altering time when things will supposedly return to normal. Except they won’t, or at least they don’t have to. Not if normal means how things were before, not the possibility of what they can be in the future
Living under conditions that separate us from one another, we remember that we are all connected, and that our individual survival is hardwired with that of the collective.
As the price of oil plummets, we can almost hear the sound of Earth catching her breath. The absence of noise reminds us to listen the deep quiet beneath it all.
Living as we are, under our own microscopes, everything about us is magnified. On any given day, the best of us might make her presence know, or be completely overshadowed by the worst, Most days it is a dance between the two, and the invitation at our feet is to learn to let the better angels of our nature take the lead.
We are discovering just how little we really need, and how much we don’t.
We are remembering what it means to be neighbors again. As we care for one another the world becomes a safer place, and while tribalism might have kept us alive in the past, it will do nothing but insure our demise in the future.
The powers that be are going to work mightily to persuade us to forget the hard-earned wisdom that we belong to one another and are indeed one another’s keepers including the care for this fragile planet we all call home.
This is a molten moment.
We have the chance to be changed for the greater good, and our calling is to remember what we are learning in the here and now once we step back out into our shared world of the there and then.
No matter what anyone tells us, and I mean anyone, things will not return to normal. At least that is my deepest hope and my most fervent prayer.
Photo: USGS