Heroes Not Zombies

The first cherry blossom appeared in the garden this week. I love this time of year when the bare, sleeping trees, awaken, produce buds and start to unfurl both flowers and leaves. It’s surely one of the most powerful phases of the annual cycle of nature.

There’s a wild plum tree in the corner of the vineyard next to the garden and this week, it too, has started to produce its blossom. Every day when I step outside I look at these two trees, one to my left, and one to my right, and each time I look I see more flowers. It never ceases to amaze me and it never passes me by.

I think a lot can pass us by in life. Either because we are too busy (occupied) or too distracted (pre-occupied). That’s one of the reasons why I love the appearance of the blossom. We are sensitive to change and so it’s hard not to notice that these two trees look different every day just now. When there isn’t such obvious change we sort of tune things out, don’t we? We stop noticing because it’s all so familiar.

Well with this pandemic we’re all noticing change now, aren’t we? (Maybe not all of us, we’re still seeing footage of crowds of people carrying on as if nothing is any different) So, maybe that’s one way for us to get something positive out of this crisis……maybe it’ll help us to wake up, to reflect, to notice and to wonder.

If you’re living in one of the countries which is restricting movements and everyday activities you’ll have a bit more time on your hands now as well. I’ve seen lots of articles online about how to fill the time, how to avoid boredom. There are loads of articles about movie and long form fiction streaming services, ebooks, virtual museum tours, live concerts online and so on.

There’s another opportunity which comes with this time of waking up, noticing and finding more time on our hands….it’s the opportunity to ask ourselves about priorities and meaning. How am I living my life these days? Is there anything I’d like to change? Do some things seem less important now, and others way more important than we had realised?

We have the opportunity to that collectively too. This is a time to create, to invent, to have new ideas, and to share them. This is a time to put out into the world the behaviours we want to see more of….to love more, to care more, to share more, to tip the scales back from quantities to qualities. It’s a time to think and talk about what kind of societies we have and how we want to share this one small planet with each other and all the other creatures which live here.

Is it a time to shift the balance from competition and selfishness to co-operation and compassion?

I think it could be.

What might we begin to see blossoming if we started to make some of these changes in our lives?