How beautiful! Brazil projected the flags of our countries on to its “Christ the Redeemer” statue last night. As awful as all of this COVID-19 situation is, I do love the feeling of the world working on something together, and putting so much of the hatefulness aside.
This is one of those times in life that I am trying to expand my patience and my understanding of people and their reactions to this experience, and I am also hoping that they are doing the same for me. What is the “right” reaction to these times? Is there even such a thing? It is said that when parents experience the tragedy of losing a child, they are 50 percent more likely to get a divorce. I believe that this has a lot to do with the fact that we all process our emotions, our trials, and our experiences, differently, in an internal sense. We grieve differently, and on different internal time schedules. We know this and yet we are aghast, when externally, people are all behaving so differently towards a situation, that it makes us start questioning our own reasoning and our own sanity. That’s all very uncomfortable, isn’t it?
Like all times in raising children, I am having to hold my ground in what I believe we, as a family, have to do to keep not only our family safe, but also our community safe and our medical workers safe, so that our hospitals aren’t overrun and our doctors aren’t sick. In my opinion, these have to be our priorities. Clearly, not everyone has the same opinion, as I do. Our beaches are packed. It is times like these that I have to remind myself that I can only control my own discernment, my own actions and reactions, and to put the focus back on to myself, and the well-being of me and my family. Everyone processes things differently. Everyone takes time to let things “sink in.” Everyone has different beliefs on how this all should be handled, individually and as a community. And who really knows, who is really “right”?
I think that I have witnessed a lot of denial, and anger, and rebelliousness, in myself at times, and also, with other people. No one wants this to be happening. No one created this virus. No one wants their lives changed instantly, in what feels like a blink of an eye. But, the virus is here. It is causing deaths, and disruptions, and shut-downs, and economic pain, whether we think it should, or not. It is what it is. We can only control our OWN reaction to it. To try to control others’ reactions to it, is futile and a waste of time. To lament and to judge and to resent others’ reactions to it, only causes pain for ourselves. At the same time, we don’t need approval from others about our own decisions and our own reactions.
A reset button has been hit on the world. As a society, we are in a major pause. Many of our lives have been reduced to being “quiet with ourselves”, in a way, which many of us claim to want, all of the time. Yet, a lot of us seem very uncomfortable with this new reality, this new introversion, and so we still try to control everything outside of ourselves. If ever a time, there was going to be the life lesson about self exploration, self examination, self love, self acceptance, now is going to be the time. And the beautiful outcome of that is, if more of us come to that level of self understanding and acceptance, we will feel that same, all-encompassing compassion towards all others, and the world will be an even more beautiful, uplifted place. I see the world as a Phoenix, who will rise beautifully, and cleansed, and simplified, and renewed, from the dark ashes of loss and of fear and doom and sadness.
I thought that Think Smarter (Twitter) put it beautifully, with this post:
Stay well, friends and readers. I love you and I am here for you.