One thing that spending time with family, or even close friends, has allowed to attain the realization that the only way I will be able to give my children the world that I want for them, is for me to go out there — in the real world — and create it for them.
In our hyper-accelerated, hyper-connected world this requires a deliberate effort on our part to not loose connection with the “real” world around us. But how?
I started writing this post in the pre-C19 days. As the days had gone by in waiting for inspiration to continue writing until it felt complete, how relevant its message has become for me. I wonder whether it feels the same for you.
Like I shared on a social media post recently, if you would have told me how this year (2019 — to give you an idea how longs this has been in the making!) would end back in January when it started, I would not have believed you. Most likely, I would have crawled under my covers crying, “wake me up when it’s over!” But no, I didn’t completely crawled back into bed. It took all I had at each moment, but I kept “digging my well” (you’d need to check our latest #LeapFromWithin episode for that one) and “setting my state” in an intentional wash-rinse-repeat cycle. There in lies the answer: cycling, repeated actions. If there is any “secret” to transforming your life, to any change, is not going harder at it, grinding, hard work; it is consistency. Like the old proverb says, “Constant dropping wears away a stone.” Keep that in mind as we move along.
When contemplating consistency as the key to creating our vision of a better world, regardless of what that looks like. Now, is there anything in particular we are to be consistent about? If so, what is it? The current state of affairs (I write this amid the C19 2-week global quarantine of March 2020) has many lessons for us to consider that can help us answer this question. Although some might be hard to hear.
In the words of Aristotle, “a common danger unites even the bitterest enemies.” From what seems like one day to the next, we are being shaken off by Nature like a dog shakes off the water of its back. C19 has become the “enemy” of humanity, globally. For a moment we have been able to suspend judgement and blame games for solidarity and connection regardless of the distance — self-imposed or geographical.
Those of us who still can venture outside can bear witness on the change in the environment, not only the natural environment, but the shift in the energy of our common spaces is palpable, undeniable. This may well be our biggest lesson: Life will find a way — always.
Life, its force, is consistent in that way. It was here before us, and it will be here after us. Our economic mind frame had convinced us that taking a break was a luxury we could not afford; that if we stooped for a second, the world would collapse, it would cease to be. Yet here we are one week into our slowdown experiment in this global laboratory and Life continues to find a way, consistently. Rather, it is us who have adapted to its ways.
We have learned that proximity does not equal connection; that there are more productive ways to do things; remembering the bond with our family and children and pets. Most of all, we are being shown that we are not as in control or as necessary as we might have thought. That we need our world, Nature, more than it needs us. And that is hard to wrap our head around.
Our arrogance as a species has led us here, ironically it can also be our saving grace. Perhaps all our technological progress has been brought forth for this moment in time, to assist us in carving a way forward that gives us and Nature a softer, gentler way forward. The ability to create an environment that nourishes and inspires us from the inside out.
What this brave new world would look like is up to each and everyone of us. We are creating it in this moment with every decision, with every choice we make. We have the opportunity each day of the coming week to choose better, to do better, to be better — consistently. If we are to endeavour in anything, let’s make it consistently becoming better. Individually and collectively.
We owe it to those humans who are standing at the front line, the scientists and health professionals fighting this “enemy” for us. We owe it to those of us, the world over, who were not as fortunate as you, who are reading these lines, to make it through to this day. We owe it to our children who are sharing this experience with us. More so, we owe it to ourselves at this time and to the humans whom are yet to come.
What have you learned from this experiment so far? What does your “world in the making” look like?
For me, it has confirmed the hypothesis that what is real in this world, consistently, is that #WeAreOne
The NoLimits Lifecode 