Is what was ‘normal’ what we want to go back to?

This post is different for me. Its not about mental health, hypnotherapy, neuroscience or helping you change your life by changing your thoughts. We are living through an incredible time right now and I believe it could be an opportunity to do amazing good in the world and for the planet.

Lockdown is still with us and will be for the foreseeable future. Really, no-one knows what might happen but there is a group who are pushing for things to resume, and to go back to the way they were.

But, how can they? This time we’ve had, The Great Pause, has affected us all, whether we’ve been touched by Corona Virus or not.

There is a hush, a quiet that had previously been thought impossible to bring about. I am in awe of just how deep that pause had penetrated the world, and of the incredible resilience of nature who is showing us who really is the dominant force in the world.

Maybe now human beings will find a way to fit into nature, to co-exist, instead of trying to dominate and subjugate and exploit the natural world. A way to exist without wholesale destruction and desecration.

How do we make a difference on a personal level?Much as I want to travel again and visit exotic places, maybe now we create virtual travel adventures, trips using the internet and imagination rather than flying like bugs swarming all over the globe.

Stop consuming. Yes, we all still need the essentials for life and our luxuries but do we really need to consume clothes, books, games, toys, stuff in the vast quantities we did previously?

I aim to make more discerning choices, longer lasting quality items, and wear things til they fall apart. If we could start seeing frayed hems and faded colours as desirable signs of intelligence and dignity we might be less interested in everything new all the time. Buy less, buy better and wear it til it falls apart.

I love the idea of an Universal Income for everyone, all over the world. I believe most people want to work, to create, to be of use. People who can still work would do so, adding to their income. and those who can’t or won’t work won’t be forced into desperate poverty, potential criminality and lack of basic human needs.

An Universal Income for everyone makes more sense to me than our failed capitalist system with a few billionaires hoarding the majority of the world’s wealth.

Ordinary people were vilified a few weeks ago for stockpiling toilet rolls and yet those few people are celebrated for building parasitical businesses that don’t pay their taxes, don’t pay their staff a living wage, claims millions in government subsidies and hoard vast amounts of wealth. Tesco and Amazon are the two examples that immediately come to my mind but there are plenty of others like them.

The Great Pause – maybe nothing will change immediately, but I hope this experience has had a profound effect on everyone for the good of us all.

Why stockpile billions to fund Mars exploration or develop space travel when we have this amazing jewel of a planet to live on? Why can’t these billionaires spend their wealth on creating symbiotic businesses that benefit all of us, including the earth? Projects that replenish our natural resources instead of using them up and destroying the world in their process?

Many of us want the certainty of things going ‘back to normal.’ But normal wasn’t normal. Let’s take this time to think about how we want to live and design a new humanity that co-operates, that lives in harmony with every part of the human world and the natural one.

Love,

Cynthia