Covid-19 has thrown everything into uncertainty. And in this vacuum of certainty, in the pause we are all being forced to take, I see so many people reaching for and grasping for certainty and "truth." People grasping for a sense of control and security in a narrative they can believe. Maybe you are watching the mainstream news and believing that. And yet even there things are changing every day. Or maybe you are starting to go down the rabbit holes of conspiracy theories and have found one that feels true in this moment for you. I am not here to tell you what is true or not true or what to believe or not to believe, because I honestly don't know.
But, I do want to challenge you , and invite you to sit with the unknown and the uncertainty. And to ask a different question. I want you to ask the question of who do YOU want to be? What kind of person do you want to be? Because with every action and every word spoken and even with each thought that you choose to put energy towards, you have a choice. And those choices, individually and collectively, are going to determine the experience you have in this world and the experience we collectively create on this planet Earth.
In a Sunday Yoga class I often attend led by Kate Counts she always does five or so minutes of "free yoga." She cranks the music and stops giving instruction. The only instruction is move how you want to. If you want to. She says the first time a teacher had her to do this she was terrified. She wanted to be told what to do. And indeed it is terrifying. But it is so important.
What we thought we knew is being thrown out the window right now. "Normal" today looks nothing like it did two months ago. So in essence, many of us are feeling like suddenly the teacher at the front of the classroom stopped giving us instruction. Stood up and walked out. And set fire to the rule book on their way out.
As people get more uncomfortable they are grasping for something to hold on to. And as our president is pushing to reopen the economy and many public health officials are saying it is too soon, people are quickly choosing which narrative to believe, which side of the picket line to be on. I see it in heated Facebook debates, finger pointing and threats to unfriend....
But if you bring your attention inward, and seek to quiet the mind that so wants to make sense of it all there are other much simpler but perhaps more important choices to be made. Do you want to be generous or do you want to hoard today? Do you want to be kind to the one that disagrees with you and see that maybe they are acting out their own fear for their economic survival or do you want lash out in anger today? Do you want to spend the whole day reading news and getting more anxious or do you want to go outside and listen to the birds and smell the flowers today?
We are standing at the precipice of a great unknown. That unknown has actually always been there. But Covid-19 has taken the clothes off the emperor, so to speak, so that now we are all staring that unknown in the face. And from here there are infinite paths forward. Take a moment, close your eyes, and just look out over the vast horizon of possibility. Forget the hard realities of today, just for one moment, and instead tap into that feeling of expansiveness and possibility. What is the path forward that feels most resonant with you? What is the world that you dream of, the life that you dream of, if anything were possible? And how can you align your actions, words, thoughts, and what you choose to give attention to with that vision so as to move forward and towards that vision today?
Thank you for reading. This post is inspired by Charles Eisenstein, who, if you haven't heard of, I highly recommend you go check out, for more thought provoking, insightful, and in my opinion, refreshingly real discourse about many of the choices we are facing today.