When Covid 19 is over, what then?

Like you, I receive a lot of well written, thoughtful, and meaningful essays or articles offering hope during this terrible time, and often expressing thanks for forcing the world to stop and take notice that change is needed.

That is a good thing, and I am in favor of the introspection this situation is causing and thankful for the hope and optimism that people are expressing by various means. That good things have happened and will happen due to the pandemic is certain, and people have good intentions for change when the world goes back to whatever the new normal is.

However, if we have learned anything at all it is that when the tough times are over, people go back to being whatever they were before. We don't remember pain very well. Sometimes it only takes one generation before the pain is forgotten.

Someone sent me something recently (see below), and it makes my point clearly --

It was written in 1869 during the cholera pandemic by Kathleen O'Mara, and was reprinted during the Spanish flu pandemic in 1919.

And people stayed at home

And read books

And listened

And they rested

And did exercises

And made art and played

And learned new ways of being

And stopped and listened

More deeply

Someone meditated, someone prayed

Someone met their shadow

And people began to think differently

And people healed.

And in the absence of people who

Lived in ignorant ways

Dangerous, meaningless and heartless,

The earth also began to heal

And when the danger ended and

People found themselves

They grieved for the dead

And made new choices

And dreamed of new visions

And created new ways of living

And completely healed the earth

Just as they were healed.

Would you have guessed that this was written over 150 years ago? We can only hope that this time, because of the global nature of the problem, and the almost global method of dealing with it, that we may have been forced out of our comfort zone, that some of our habits may be changed, that rampant consumerism may lose a bit of it's hold on us, and that the lessons learned may have traction for the future. 

I hope we will "make new choices, dream new visions, create new ways of living, and heal the earth"!