(written March 24, 2020)
The world is in chaos. Life as we know it has paused, and a new reality has emerged with no way to predict how long these changes will last, nor how they will affect us when it's time to move forward again. This uncertainty can be frightening.
So what are we to do as this unsettling state of limbo shifts and swirls around us?
We are to love, first and foremost. Be kind. Be compassionate. Be in order to do this fully, the most important thing we can do is *learn*. Study. Observe. See the reality of what is happening around us and within us and connect the dots, then use that information to change our own perspective.
There are lessons everywhere in our current global situation. I want to focus on an extremely important one that has become more apparent to me every day:
We are all intensely and inextricably connected, all the way down to the physical level.
There's an Ani DiFranco lyric that keeps circling my brain lately -
"Each breath is recycled from someone else's lungs / our enemies are the very air in disguise"
I'm quite certain this was not meant to be an uplifting refrain, but it is to me. Stop and think about the actual concept for a moment. This pandemic is spread so easily and thoroughly just by us doing the everyday, normal things of life. The ones we don't even think about, like going to the grocery store, having coffee with a friend, or going to work.
Droplets from the lungs of those within six feet of us get taken into our own bodies and integrated into our systems, where they change what is going on inside us in invisible ways. The same is true of microscopic particles left by others that we pick up with our hands and then transfer to ourselves.
This happens whether there is a pandemic at large or not. This has been happening since the beginning of the human race. Every conversation you have in person, you are breathing in pieces of them and taking that into your own body...breathing out pieces of yourself for them to take in. We make these exchanges without being aware, but they have a very real implication - and I'm not talking about the current infection.
Think about all the people you had face-to-face conversations with in the last month before we started social distancing. Each one of those people received particles of you that are now integrated in them, part of them, and vice versa.
We are literally walking around with pieces of each other within us. Every day. Right this minute, even in this crisis.
In this very real, biological way, we are connected. And I find it beautiful.
Now, what if we apply this in the energetic realm? Because I have some very important news for you...energy is far more contagious than any virus.
We have all experienced this phenomenon, but just as we didn't think about respiratory droplets before the novel coronavirus, we simply didn't take note of it. Every time you fell prey to infectious laughter when you didn't even know what was funny...every time you've had an encounter with someone in a sour mood that threw off your whole day...every time you've spent and hour with a loved one and come away feeling uplifted and sated...all of these are examples of energy transfer.
We can make the choice to move through the world consumed by the fear that is gripping so many. That is of course within our power. Or we can choose a different path, and begin tapping into the contagion of compassion and humanity.
So this is my challenge to you now - something to ruminate on during this time of forced introspection:
How different would your life look if you thought about your energy being as contagious as your respiratory droplets? If you knew it could make or break someone's day, or even affect their life choices? How different would our world be if we policed the health and spread of our souls as well as we did our physical selves?
These are new times, and they require new ways of thinking. We can lift each other up and be part of the Love that is rising.
And I will choose that option, always.
All love, fellow travelers.
JA