Suddenly everything was different!
Oh really?
Like “it came out of nowhere”?
Change isn’t like that.
Everything that happens emerges in the present out of the past and in the light of the possible futures.
Most change actually happens slowly.
Look at this leaf turning red. You can stand and watch it for a while but you’ll be hard put to see it actually turning red. Then one day, you notice it and, wow! it’s turned red!
It’s like when you stand and look at the clock and try to see the minute hand moving. Such a different experience from looking at the clock, noting the time, then absorbing yourself in a good book, looking up at the clock and thinking “It’s that time already??!!”
Sometimes I think we have an idea that we humans are separate from this world. That we just popped up fully formed one day. That we are separate from Nature. That Nature is something outside of us. But it isn’t.
We emerged within Nature as a wave emerges on the surface of the sea.
The wave appears, then it disappears. It never leaves the sea.
So, what’s all this got to do with where we find ourselves today in the midst of this pandemic?
Here’s the thing. This pandemic didn’t come from nowhere. It emerged.
It emerged, embedded in the physical, social, cultural, economic, political world in which we live.
I’m not a fan of all the war metaphors. This is not a deadly enemy out to beat us. And even if we “conquer” it (whatever that would look like), like buses, there’ll be another one along shortly.
I think it would be good to look at the bigger pictures.
How do we act in relation to each other?
How do we act in relation to other forms of life – the animals, the plants, the insects and the micro-organisms – none of whom we could live with out?
What if we shifted our emphasis away from competition towards collaboration?
What if we shifted our emphasis away from control to adaptation?
What if we shifted our emphasis away from consuming to helping?
What if we shifted our emphasis away from parts to wholes?
Heroes Not Zombies 
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