When the world ground to a halt…
Today I sat in the garden for over an hour just thinking. I can not remember the last time that I had the time to do that, and it was lovely.
We are nearing the end of week 3 of lock down. I was thinking that as much as I am hopeful that in a year from now that this will be a dim and distant memory for us all, I also think that we will all have this enforced stay at home regime etched in our memories to share with our grandchildren in years to come. It’ll be just like the “I remember the war..” stories we used to hear from our grandparents.
Will any of this actually make any lasting change though? I think for some of us it might. Time with family when you are all feeling a bit scared and isolated and out of your usual routine can make you really appreciate what you have.
But I am yet to be convinced that all the bigging up for our health service will make any changes to the way that health employees are actually treated in the long term. In fact I am pretty convinced that when this pandemic is over and the economic recession bites, all of the “key-workers” will be the first ones to be hit again and the divide between the rich and poor will just continue to increase.
We are seeing the use of socialist policies now, big businesses requiring state support to survive the impact of closure. I doubt that social policy will be as big on the agenda when we come out of the other side.
More of us will be struggling if this goes on for a long time. We need to make sure that we continue to help each other the way that I’ve seen people reaching out and helping communities now. I just think it needs to not just be because people suddenly have nothing better to do or because it makes them look good on social media. We must not forget that when things return to normal that some people will have lost everything, family members, their businesses, their livelihoods and maybe their homes. We need to work out how we can maintain the compassion and learn from this “press-pause” moment on everyday life.
When this all started I read everything I could on Facebook and watched the news intently. Then I found myself feeling overwhelmed and my emotions seemed to be up and down trying to get my head around the total lack of control over my life. So now I am trying to stay focussed on staying healthy, physically and emotionally, and doing everything I can to support my family, my friends and my community to survive this strange time.
I do feel that I am back in control, despite not being able to behave as I normally would, but I also want to make certain that I fully understand the lessons that Covid-19 leaves in it’s wake. The impact on the environment, the impact on people and our communities and what we have learned and how we can apply it to behave differently in the future.
I hope that we can remember that the people that lost their lives were someone’s mother, father, daughter and son, they were important and not just a statistic.
Just as the earth is healing itself now, I think it is going to take some time for us all to heal after this. Being kind and understanding towards each other for a long time to come is going to be paramount.
For now, I hope you all stay safe, stay healthy and stay at home.
“Hearts that beat to the tune of kindness can change the rhythm of the world” — C.J. Peterson
