Things change in the blink of an eye. It as simple as that and yet we live like things will continue and sustain themselves forever. We live like we will live forever. We forgot how fragile life is. If this corona pandemic has reminded me again and again is the changing nature of things and of our lives and its inherent fragility. In some ways its comforting but its also discomforting at the sometime. Ironic!
This was the first year didn't have plans for a major vacation. Each year over the past decade or so, we've travelled to different places on earth far and wide. It's just been great. We have done China, Scandinavia, Iceland, Africa, South America, Australia, parts of Asia....but for some reason this was the year we were going to take it easy. Cause as fun as it may sound, traveling can be tiring. So we decided to go back home to Sri Lanka, where we were born and raised. So in January we booked for travel in March. Little did we know. By mid March we had cancelled all our plans because of the pandemic. And now we've been at home in isolation for just over a month.
But my story is actually isn't a good description of how things change in the blink of an eye. To me what's happening around us is. My training had to be cancelled. My piano lessons had to go online within a week. We had to get used to a new way of living in a hurry. But that's the least of the problems. I think of (as of today) almost 23000 families that lost a loved one. People who are in ICUs waiting to be able to live normal again. All the workers in healthcare and other essential services, who have to go into work everyday knowing that are risking it all. So many millions of people out of work..there livelihoods gone in the blink of an eye. This was a great year for the markets..record highs and then it fell like a wave falling back to the ocean. Who would have thought? No one did..yet it happened. Job numbers were high as the skies and then it was gone. Airline industry was making record profits and then it was grounded....things just stopped.... in the blink of an eye.
Life changes so fast...but we don't notice and for the first time we are forced to take note. It's happening so fast and for long enough and in vast numbers and all around the globe at the same time that we are forced to stop and look. I hope we do that instead of turning a blind eye and getting on with our little lives. I hope people stop to notice that even if it isn't to you or your loved ones its someone else's and the pain is no different to than if you had to go through it yourselves. I hope we find perspective, compassion, empathy in this very difficult time.
I have yet known anyone close to me who is sick or have died. But the operative word here is 'yet'. There are no certainties....how can there be? We got to be real stupid, or be in a la la land for not to feel that way...at least I think that way. Its insane. I have never experienced or lived through a situation like in my 45 years. I have lived-in a country that was ravaged with a civil war for most of my childhood. But never were we restricted to a house. But this isn't a war...at least not in the sense of have come to known wars. But yet it feels like one. It feels like one way war...where nature has decided to raise itself in defense, perhaps, maybe....but I feel She has finally decided enough is enough. And we have no defense for he first time. All the money, all the weapons, all the brains and technology in the world, hasn't been able to fight it. We have been pushed into our homes and locked down.
Things change in a hurry. I bet this too will change at some point and life will go back to normal, whatever that normal maybe at such a time. But I hope and sincerely hope we will not forget the lessons that this pandemic I believe is here to teach us. For if we d we will only leave ourselves vulnerable and open such incidents in the future. What is it that I have learnt? This is personal but this is what I have learnt so far.
That life and nature is precious. Each one of us including all other beings are lives that yearn to live. No one wants to die but we do. No one wants to be sick but we do. No one wants to have their lives altered in drastic ways but it does. So we have to live in a more wholesome way. Its not enough that we find compassion, empathy, love, generosity when things go wrong...it's good that we can summon it at somepoint but it's no enough. We can't wait for things to wrong, people to get sick, people to lose jobs, people to die before we summon the better angels in ourselves. We have to do it everyday. And it doesn't have to be big. Sometimes we get these things wrong. We want to go big, do big...actually that's not necessary. Life doesn't happen as "big bangs' most of time. Life happens in moments. Life happens in each breath. But we are so distracted and busy that we cannot see it. So we need tone simple and live simply and life closer to those truths than what we want to believe in. We need to align ourselves to the pattern and rhythms of nature. We need to learn respect it and learn that we cannot control it all. We will try to and sometimes we might be successful but that is no indication that we are able to do that all the time. We also need to change ourselves continuously. We are such creatures of habit and in that we have created our own sufferings. Over the weekend which was Easter, so many people were unhappy that they couldn't attend church. If God is omnipresent then he/she can be wherever you are...doesn't have to be in a church with a congregation. Whats wrong with looking at things differently and doing things differently? In wanting to stick to things just because that's the way we've done it for years does't mean that we have to continue that way any longer....we need to be able to change and adapt because it's required of us every single day. But we don't notice and we don't have time to make the adjustments.
To me these are some of the lessons and I hope that at a time we are back to normal that they stick with me. I hope people learn for themselves some of these lessons if not more....I hope for a better, a more wholesome being emerges from these dark and difficult time.
