Heroes Not Zombies

You could say “It’s just a cloud”, but that word, “just”, sets up a whole series of limits. It limits the imagination, cutting it off before it gets going. It limits meaning, preferring only the superficial one, and choosing not to dive any deeper. It limits attention, because who is going to linger over anything that is “just” something? Who wouldn’t want to move on and try to find something which is “more”?

So, it’s not “just a cloud” when I look at it.

This cloud has shape and form. It seems to come from a narrow origin point down in the bottom left of the photo, and to swell out rapidly to fill the image’s entire top edge. It has a form like a cone. Or like a river expanding into an estuary. Or it is like a puff of smoke spreading out into the wide blue yonder.

Or it’s a genie……just escaped from a bottle.

I heard that phrase used the other day there, so that’s probably why my mind opened up the possibility of this being a genie. I heard an epidemiologist replying to the question, about covid, “When will this all be over?” (haven’t we all been asking this question again, and again, for many weeks now?) He replied “Once that genie got out of the bottle, there was no putting it back”.

So, that’s that then.

Covid is here to stay.

Or it’s not.

Because, if there is one thing I’ve become ever more sure of during this pandemic, it’s that nobody knows. Nobody is any good at predicting the future.

There’s something else I’ve become sure of during this pandemic. You can’t be sure of anything.

There have been, and continue to be, plenty of people claiming certainty. People claiming they know exactly what to do, what measures to enact, what advice to give. People claiming they know that they are making the best possible decisions based on the best possible science. But then things change again. And it turns out their certainty was misguided, or worse, a pretence.

Does all that sound a bit bleak?

Well, I think it probably does, and there are certainly times during this pandemic where each of us feels somewhat overwhelmed, a bit flattened, a bit done in by it all. Different people have had different challenges, different traumas, different problems to deal with. Some, on the other hand, have profited. Some have cashed in with lucrative contracts. The richest 0.1% have got a lot richer I believe. But that just goes to show, this genie doesn’t have the same effect on every one of us, does it?

But here’s the thing. This genie has made a few things a lot more clear.

It’s clearer now than ever that change is the only constant. The virus has changed, our responses have changed, the pandemic has changed. And that isn’t going to stop. So when the epidemiologist says covid is here to stay, it doesn’t mean life is going to stay this way……because that’s not what life does.

We change too. We adapt, we reflect and re-consider. We make new choices. We can make new choices.

What I see more clearly now than ever is that our societies are vulnerable, our way of life has become precarious, and that we should attend to those failings if we want a healthier, more sustainable, way of life. Just look at who has been hit the hardest by this bug. The elderly, the poor, the disadvantaged, the chronically sick. Is it beyond us to come up with better ways to look after the elderly, to reduce poverty, to address injustice and unfairness, to enable those with chronic ailments to live healthier, stronger lives? Surely not.

Actually a lot of light has been shed on many issues since this genie got out of its bottle.

We’ve learned the value of community, of living locally, of spending more time with family and less time commuting. We’ve discovered some of the joys in the everyday present, some of the wonders and delights of the here and now. We’ve realised how interconnected and interdependent we all are.

We’ve seen and heard countless stories of acts of care, compassion and commitment. Can we build on those? Can we nurture those?

We’ve learned that many of the poorest paid workers are actually “key workers” or “essential workers”. Will we remember that, as the pandemic wanes?

Perhaps more than anything we’ve learned that we human beings are social creatures. We need each other. Relationships and communication are important to us. We’ve learned that when we work together, when we collaborate, rather than competing with, or fighting with, each other, we can achieve some pretty amazing things. Can we build on that? Can we nurture that?

There will be other genies on the way, and we’ll need the same skills, talents and values……care, compassion and collaboration. It strikes me that if we build on those we can create a better, more resilient, more sustainable way of living. Is that possible? What do you think?