Falling Into the Future.

Thoughts on The Great Unraveling, The Great Remaking.

Just over a couple of weeks ago, we were in school watching the unfolding of a surreal, unreal story, one that felt like we were falling headlong into a science fiction story or movie.

As the story continues to unfold around us, and we are all caught inside this bizarre new reality, there are a few things that stand out for me as I know they have for many others but which I would really like to name here, to acknowledge.

I am deeply moved by the profound recognition of just how connected we truly are. 

For the first time ever, in perfect reflection of the world we have created, we are all truly aware that we are together in the same boat. This Small Blue Dot we inhabit that hangs in space suddenly feels very intimate, more intimate than ever before. For not much more than a couple of decades now, we have been marveling at and loving ‘how connected’ we are. How technology has brought us together. 

But this new situation has really brought that home in a different, more sinister and more real way. We are more deeply connected than we ever truly comprehended, as this virus has shown us. Our connectedness is what allows it to spread, we can’t help ourselves. It takes our governments telling us to distance ourselves to force us to do so, and even then some people are finding it impossible. And so it travels around the world, infecting every country, and all people, without discrimination.
Could we ever have imagined being so as one, so truly together, so truly connected with every other citizen on this planet?

But there is something more to this connectivity, something older and deeper, something we have forgotten that we are now being reminded of, painfully.
I have been immersed, in recent times, in the writings and thoughts of people like Robin Wall Kimmerer, Robert Macfarlane, Richard Powers, and Paul Hawkin, among others, who speak to the deep, indigenous knowledge of how we are actually connected, how we have always been connected, but we have forgotten. It makes our recent technological connectivity seem embarrassingly one-dimensional, albeit useful in its own way.

Looking into these worlds they abide in gives me a strange sense of being a child, lying on my stomach and looking down into a deep, deep well, as though trying to see something that is in the past, that I have lost, only to see the sky and realise I am, in fact, looking up, looking forward into the future. There is no separation. There is no divide between humans and nature. The idea that there is a divide is such a bizarre one and so recent too, yet it is so pervasive that we are all completely ensnared by it.
Looking into these worlds has given me so much clarity, so much understanding, and in turn, peace. I have been moved to tears by the deep recognition of what they are saying.

What have been your silver linings, your Corona Gold?

Stay safe, stay well, stay home.