suddenly the people around me, friends, neighbors, clients, and i, are signaling that they’re basically done with sheltering in place and ready to get back to normal. the sentiment is this, “they said 2 weeks was important. i did two weeks. i didn’t die or get sick and nobody i’m close to died or got sick. so that means we’re all well and it worked so i’m going to go on a little holiday to visit my friend in los angeles.”
anybody else having these thoughts/plans/feelings? yeah, i thought so. me too. i’m working on a way to get the hell out of dodge without coming into contact with another human being. and i want to say you can’t stop me.
the inner ego wants what it wants when it wants it. everyone in the world has an ego. as an american, my ego has been given a green light for a long time. the reason we are an economy that drives the world’s economy is because american consumers have had decades of believing that we get to have what we want when we want it. a certain bazillionaire named jeff bezos can tell you more about the money that can be mined from that energy if you like.
by the end of next month i will have been living in this body and this timeline for fifty-nine years. in those nearly six decades, as a privileged american, i have not really had to undergo any sustained collective hardship. even the vietnam war for me was mostly just a time of sustained judgment and anger, not hardship. the veterans of our various endless wars in my lifetime would have no doubt had a different experience.
in other parts of the world during this timeframe, there have been many wars, genocide (serbia, cambodia, rwanda, syria to name just a few places), dire poverty and wide scale malnutrition. all of this has touched my heart, but little of it has touched my life or the lives of those around me.
and now in march and a little bit of april in sacramento, california, united states of america, i’ve been touched by the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. i ate dinner with my husband at home every night, worried about my 86 year old mom’s care and safety, and couldn’t go in person to my bikram yoga class, to get a massage or my hair cut or nails fixed. and i am just done. i have had enough, dammit! when will i get out of this hell!?
meanwhile, at one church community in my city, there are 70+ reported cases of the virus and they are still doing bible study in person in their homes. they refuse to stop. i am sitting in judgment of them, all the while i am planning my escape.
so i ask myself, everywhere i’ve decided that i always get to do whatever i want when i want it but that other people don’t get to do whatever they want when they want it and that i am right and they are wrong, and everything that is times a gazillion am i willing to destroy and uncreate it all right now? yes!
what energy, space and consciousness can i and we as americans and we as a world be to ask every day how we can be a contribution to the world and to follow whatever is lightest, most loving and most honoring of ourselves and our neighbors and anything that doesn’t allow it am i willing to destroy and uncreate it right now? yes!
