Take all of the bad things you have been hearing lately. Think of the sensational headlines, the government briefings, the conversations in the hall at work or if you can’t go to work the conversations in your social networks, take your fears and your worries and your doubts and bundle them all up, nice and tight. Imagine this tight, dense little stress ball as something you can hold in your hand. Now put it on a shelf, high up and out of your line of sight.
Look around again. Look at what remains. What do we see? We see canals in Venice that are clean and clear enough for dolphins to swim in. We see an energy grid that is no longer groaning under the weight of our luminous expectations. We see kids and families playing outside in many driveways, on many streets, in many cities. Today I saw a grown man, dad bod and all, skateboarding. I saw people in hammocks and on porches in my own neighborhood that I have never seen before. The air is getting clearer as the pollution rates go down. There are fewer accidents, fewer home invasions. More and more people are turning to nature, or to art, to express connection that we have hidden from ourselves.
Why does everything we’ve ever been told about human nature mislead us into believing the worst of ourselves? Why do the worst qualities that each of us possess become the focal point in a collapsing world? Why, in the apocalypse, are we always portrayed as falling down to our lowest selves, rather than rising up to our highest selves? What drives that? Even in history, the most terrifying and sensational acts of human horridness are the ones that become immortalized. So rarely we lift up the good. Why do we do this to ourselves? What are we missing?
Right now I am feeling fear, and worry, and doubt, and anger resonating through the community. I feel it in me. I am also feeling hope, and peace, and love. I am seeing people that are finding the good in a frightening situation. People who are raising up to love and help their neighbors. People who are reaching deep into themselves to access points of spiritual beauty and growth that was previously inaccessible to them. We know we get caught up in the busy hustle of life. We know we forget to slow down. So now that we are forced to pause, and breathe, what wonders will we find?
We don’t have to invalidate or discount the worried little stress ball we briefly set aside. But it doesn’t have to hog all of our light, either. Go, be big, be brave. Do the thing you said you wouldn’t. Lean into a forgotten art. Dance. Play. Rest. Be here, be now, because how we come out the other side of this has everything to do with where we put our energies right now. What are you going to choose?