Time flies over us but leaves its shadow behind. Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The lock-down continues…. for many, patience and courage is running thin. We are all in our own boxes waiting to get back and back to life.
There isn’t much to say or write about this pandemic that hasn’t already been written or said.
But one of my favourite writers, Roger Cohen, in his New Yorks Times column on May 2, 2020, wrote a poignant piece Who knows where the time goes that I think sums up where we are all are at the moment. All in our own boxes, waiting to get out… start up again.
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Buckmaster Fuller.
Try as we might, we cannot hold back change. It is fruitless to try. As the pandemic continues to envelope the entire world, calling everything we are doing into question, many companies, even the largest, are on their knees and whole industries are faltering – unable or unwilling to adapt or change to the new reality. Millions of people find themselves suddenly, out of work.
But there’s no going back to what was and odds are the road to the future is going to be longer than we first thought.
To recover, to start up again is going to require as much courage, spirit and energy as we can muster.
Sometimes, like now, to build a new model, will mean summoning up the sheer audacity to do something you’ve never done before.
There is only one time that is important – Now! It is the most the important time because it is the only time when we have any power. Leo Tolstoy.
The Covid-19 virus has forced upon us all, individually and as a collective, the urgent imperative to examine our priorities and our values as we stare down what may be a long road back to recovery.
We’re all in this together. To get through this challenge, we are going to find out how strong we are because because the rows we have to hoe are deep.
Over the last 20 years or so, I’ve come to believe that there is a spiritual dimension to life and that there’s a reason back of everything that happens in life.
So it is with the crisis in which we find ourselves enveloped. The ensuing development of this world wide pandemic is reminding us all of how far ‘off the track’ we got.
It is reminding us that we’re all one, regardless of what we do or where we live, regardless of our religion, ethnicity or station in life.
It is reminding us of how precious good health is, of how special life is and how short the timelines can be, and not to fritter away our time and talents.
It is reminding us of the importance of family to each of us and society at large.
It is reminding us that the choices we make are critical. We can choose to cooperate, to help and share and support each other. Or we can choose greed, selfishness and exclusion.
It is reminding us that this can be an end or a new beginning, a time when we learn from our past mistakes and transgressions and pull together to build a brighter future for our children and grandchildren.
The time, indeed, is now. In the words of the Polish Nobel Laureate, Wislawa Szymborska, “We know ourselves only as far as we’ve been tested.”