We Are All Coming Out

The time is approaching when we can emerge from our sheltered cocoons and once again be in the world, however still restricted.

How will we come out? We have all been through something even if in different ways. It is as if we have all had a slap on the cheek or a kick in the butt. We are all bruised and perhaps camera-shy on some level. At the very least, we have probably all had moments of wondering what this pandemic in our lifetime will mean for the future, our own future, our kids’ future, humanity’s future and the future of the world.

So much has changed - who would have ever thought we would all be wearing masks in public? Who could have fathomed we would be keeping a safe long distance from our own grown kids, grandchildren, parents, lovers or best friends? 

This pandemic and all its circumstantial accessories have forced us all to re-think life and its fragility, to re-consider our own roles, our dreams and passions, re-examine our activities and choices. Some have learned new things about those closest to them, good or bad, forced together or forced apart.

What will we remember? Will it be the things that seem important right now, like the little pockets of time to do things we didn’t find time for before, zooming to connect with others or work in an alternative space? Maybe it will be the ways we reacted to it all, our personal emotional interpretation of the events, our new eating or drinking habits, the unattended hair, struggles that we left behind for a moment, new struggles or fears and anxieties caused by the virus or the shelter-in-place.

It is impossible to examine an event as it is happening the way we can in retrospect. Suddenly we can’t predict so many things with no perspective possible in the moment. 

But with our social systems starting to break down, something new must emerge. Human beings resist change, and it is fascinating how far we had to take things before what we had created could no longer be sustained.

Not unlike the undoing of the Roman Empire 16 centuries ago, abuse of power, corruption, changes in values, widening gaps between people and economic disaster contributed to the end of an era. Some historians say that climate change (volcanic activity leading to the Late Antique Little Ice Age) and pandemic disease (the bubonic plague) were major contributors as well.

Where might we be on this Rome-like cycle of decline?

From the demise of Rome came a new kind of society. A new religion became dominant, a new kind of leader was chosen, and a new kind of money was created.

The Roman shake-up did not happen in a matter of weeks. And in the long time since then until now, humanity has made such enormous strides in technology, medicine, science and human psychology. Will we blindly repeat the pattern of history? Aren’t we smarter and more advanced than that?

What will WE have learned in 2020, personally and globally?
Many of us, if not all of us, will have realizations as time carries us forward as we both witness and participate in the creation of the after-pandemic world. Our days will be colored differently with the hues we each absorbed, dark  or light ones.

Now is the time for all of us to come out. We must show up and offer of ourselves differently. We must emerge from our personal metamorphosis and be in the new world what more we can be now. Our priorities may have changed, perhaps we have a new view of life. Maybe we understand work differently. We may have awakened in silence to a new awareness of time and our part in it. It may be subtle, it may be very loud. We may think we know, and perhaps we don’t. The only thing we know for certain is that each of us, and all of us, have been given an opportunity to re-think everything that matters and that don’t. We have been given a chance to re-think all that we have created and maintained, and to re-create once again.

The world-wide upheaval demands of us to earn this chapter in the journals of history as one in which we rose to the occasion together.