With COVID-19 spreading like another wild fire, this is one of those significant moments in humanity’s collective life. Such moments come from time to time, it seems, in different forms and degrees of intensity. They shake the norm and ask new things from us. They remind us that we are not gods. And at such a moment it is timely to really look inside ourselves and decide who we want to be. We can choose to see beauty and hope, or ugliness and despair. It truly is a choice. We can panic and withdraw ourselves from the chaos, contemptuous of those who have stockpiled and left shelves empty. Or we can extend sincere concern beyond our immediate family to our neighbours and wider community, and see there all the beautiful acts and attitudes of kindness that are springing up like wild flowers.
1 Comment
Phew, it’s been a while! Not only since updating my blog, but since writing at all or even mentally preparing to write. For a couple of months I was operating in what felt like ‘emergency mode’: fuelled on adrenaline (not all bad, but adrenaline nonetheless), swamped by must-do practical duties, trying to squeeze back into the UK system after three years in Malta (not as easy as you’d imagine, on any level) and exerting most of my effort to simply hold it together with a lot of uncertainty and two preschool children. It’s like when you’ve hurt your back and are having to manoeuvre yourself cautiously so as to not aggravate it, only mentally. I felt like I had to tiptoe around my own self, trying to avoid thoughts and situations that might trigger further stress, as if they were actual twinges of pain. But of course, this is tiring and unsustainable in itself. And so the whole move abroad was a far bigger transition than expected: a physical relocation as well as a massive test to my inner equilibrium. I had thought it would be a return to familiarity, but really it was the start of something unrecognisably new. I should have predicted that really.
|
|