Today I felt really compelled to write these words in the hope that they serve as a flood of positivity to combat a growing feeling of gloom and ugliness that I see creeping in to the society in which we find ourselves in 2020.
The world is certainly a very changed place this year since the advent of COVID-19. It is a place where fear and uncertainty pervade, and this sense of fear that people are feeling is a perfectly understandable emotional response to what is happening. Deep down in our subconscious, without most of us even being aware of it, lay our deepest fears such as the fear or our own mortality and the most basic instinct of self-preservation. It is why we hear stories of survivors of the Titanic in lifeboats that were hardly filled, too afraid to go back and help others for fear of being swamped. It seems crazy now, but if you were sitting shivering in one of those boats on that dark and cold night, would have done the same? Fear of our own mortality is a powerful driving force.
So it is very understandable that when faced with a pandemic we fear, at least on some level, may have the potential to kill us, that we react with the emotional response of fear. It’s a human response, it would be impossible for us not to feel fear on some level.
But more and more, we see evidence that this fear has gone too far. They say that disasters bring out the best and worst in people. We’ve seen plenty of evidence of people helping people, and communities coming together, but we’re also seeing the darker side. As a society we are spiraling out of control, and the more out of control we get, the more we fear. This had led us to become an increasingly aggressively divisive society.
One of the best examples of this at the moment is around the issue of people wearing face masks or not. It seems not so long ago that Muslim Women were being persecuted for wearing the Hijab by everyone from rednecks to politicians wanting to prove they were more racist than the next, in order to catch the redneck vote. How times change! Now it seems like so many people are falling over themselves to cover their face.
It has become a divisive issue which has engulfed society and produced extreme radicals on both sides of the debate. Personally, I have no strong feelings either way, but I respect the personal decisions of individuals on both sides. I understand that from a common sense point of view, it makes no sense to be wearing a mask because, as so many doctors have pointed out, it is counterproductive. One of the best things for your body is fresh air. So I’m in no rush to wear a mask, but I would do if I was required to, either way it doesn’t really bother me that much.
But for some people, they seem to have developed life and death fervour for their particular side of the argument. On one side, we have people think that masks should be compulsory for everyone, to the extent of wanting arrange vigilante groups to lynch anyone who doesn’t wear one. On the other side there are those who consider masks to be an affront to their personal liberties and ridicule anyone they see wearing them.
Choosing to wear a mask or not is an intensely personal decision and we all need to respect the personal choices that others make. There is nothing to be gained by poking fun at those who wear masks or deriding those who don’t.
All of this is because in a crisis, we allow fear to overcome our better judgement. It is fear which drives this divisiveness and it is an outpouring of respect and compassion that can bring us back from the brink. Fear is of itself not a bad thing. It keeps us safe, heightens our focus to bring to our attention something we need to be aware of. But when we allow this fear to take over us, we do inglorious things. It is collective fear that would drive villagers to burn someone at the stake whom they suspected of being a witch.
"It is fear which drives this divisiveness and it is an outpouring of respect and compassion that can bring us back from the brink".
~ Neill Andrew
We truly do live in uncertain times, and the more uncertain things get, the more we fear. The longer it goes on, the more uncertain we become. And so we as a society continue to spiral out of control. This will continue until we as a collective society make a conscious decision to put an end to the fear. This will not happen until we as individuals make a conscious decision to do so. Fear is a natural intrinsic emotion. It will not ‘just’ stop. We must make a conscious decision to stop it. We must become conscious creators of our own reality.
In the midst of everything which is going on, it’s hard to see an end, but it WILL end. We don’t know when but we do know that this thing WILL end at some point. There is a bright future ahead of us, but it’s how we act now which will determine how we get there. So we MUST make 2 decision right now.
Firstly, we must choose to overcome our fear. That’s not easy, fear is a natural defense mechanism meant to keep us safe. But unless we learn to control it, it will control us. And that is what we are seeing in society right now. We overcome fear by drowning it out by a flood of respect and compassion for those around us. This applies to so many areas of life, not just wearing masks, but we’ll use wearing masks as an example because this is what is happening in the world right now. Everyone is going to make their own intensely personal decision when it comes to wearing masks and you cannot begin to know what factors and circumstances go into a person arriving at their own personal decision. What we can do, and what we need to do, is to have the utmost respect for their decision even if it differs from our own. We must also embrace their decision with compassion. If we can do this, we can overcome fear and choose to become conscious creators of our own reality.
Secondly, we must look ahead to a brighter day and see in our midst an inspiring future. It’s OK to be aware of what is happening, and aware of what you can do to take sensible precautions, but you don’t have to be defined by this. YOU can control you. YOU can define you. YOU decide what the thoughts that are playing out in your mind will be. If you succumb to the negativity that you see around you, you will have a very negative experience. If you choose, because it IS your choice to make, to see an inspiring future ahead of you, one that excites you, one where this COVID thing is a thing of the past, because make no mistake, the day will come when this COVID thing is a thing of the past, then you can have glorious time RIGHT NOW! You don’t need to wait for this to happen or that to happen or the number of cases to reach a certain point, or this to happen with restrictions or that to be announced by politicians. The single biggest deciding factor which governs your life is you mind. And your mind has NO restrictions placed upon it, except for the ones imposed by you. You are the only one that can place restrictions on your mind and those restrictions can be lifted at any time. All it takes is a decision.
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer".
~ Albert Camus.
Imagine yourself at the end of the year, next year, who cares it doesn’t matter the date. But imagine yourself in the world that we know we are inexorably drawn to where COVID has passed. Life is back to normal. We know it is coming but you can choose to be there now, you can be there in your mind and you can feel the feelings of being there, you can make those feelings real, and you can live your best life NOW!
I implore you, let’s end this divisiveness once and for all, let’s do it now. Let’s begin by treating others with respect and compassion, respecting their decisions. If we can do this ourselves, we can inspire others to do the same, and then we become the catalyst for change, the change that we need in the world. We will end this disease of fear and intolerance. We will start a tidal wave of respect and compassion that will become more infectious than any disease.
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