It’s quiet. You can hardly hear the motorway near our house anymore. The odd distant train rattles on the tracks in the distance. A tractor rumbles across a nearby field, but birds have the lead vocals now. They’ve taken back their spotlight.
The world has slowed down, society as we know it has come to a standstill. If someone had told me this was going to happen a year ago, or even a few months ago, I couldn't have imagined it. Movies have been made about it, books written, computer games played. This is something that feels like it should have always been fiction, stayed in our imagination. The magnitude of it, the reality of it, is overwhelming and surreal.
Society as we know it has slowed, virtually stopped in many places. Bars and restaurants have closed, events cancelled, friends and family parted. Cars are lined up in cul-de sacs and terraces as people either adjust to working from home or have already sadly lost their jobs. The clocks are still ticking but time isn't the same.
An invisible blanket lays over us all, a blanket that we, the entire world shares, Covid-19. An exhausting, stressful, dark blanket but one that also has a strange, soft, comforting lining. It brings us together, embraces us and unites the world. It envelopes all cultures, genders and identities, the rich, the poor and all that are in-between. It crosses continents, seas and sands, mountains and forests. We are at present, one.
The world needed this pit stop. Mother Nature desperately required us to hit the pause button. Every single one of us has been given time to draw breath, recalibrate and reassess. Some will embrace this and will relish this time, like an enforced retreat, they will ask the questions, am I living the life I truly want? When all this is done, what experiences do I want to have in my life? What do I want to create? Who do I really want to spend my time with and give my energy to? Being told you cannot go outside into the world you know and operate as you usually would, makes you think about what you value, what you want more of and what means the most to you, it is the greatest of levellers. Freedom of personal movement and choice is everything.
Others will be confronted with things that take them to dark places, it will take them to decisions they have been avoiding for many years but cannot avoid any longer. It will affect the mental and physical health of millions for a long time to come. The magnitude of the fall-out is unimaginable to me.
I hope we all get to a place where we can see a positive, better, fulfilling, less selfish, more appreciative, patience filled future. I hope we become less of a throw-away society, I hope we learn to eat like we may not have food tomorrow as so many experience on a daily basis, to enjoy it, savour it, be truly thankful for it. I hope we’re not completely messing things up for our children. I hope they remember the good bits of this. That we have pulled together as communities, as families, as societies. That we have looked at ourselves and seen the worst of us, so we can really make the very best of us going forward.
Humans are not and never will be perfect, but I hope that we can take and make time for each other and after all this is over, that there is a better future for ourselves and for the world.
I hope we learn from this and that change is coming. Isn't it that we were actually always one? We just forgot.
Betty B x
