I am amazed with how fast people change their behaviour when confronted with a “pandemic”. The bars, restaurants coffee shops shut, offices closed, staying home, staying 6 feetor 2 metres away from others, even your friends and family. In a blink of an eye everyone has complied to an extensive degree. What will happen the day after coronavirus? I asked myself this questions and here is my best estimation using examples from history and recent events.
This is a dark hour for humanity but there is a glimmer of hope. This glimmer to me looks like powerful lasers lighting up the sky. They spell the word OPPORTUNITY. No this is not another feel good message of the opportunity to spend time with your family uninterrupted or finish a book, or find a hobby, or work out, or learn to cook, sing, or dance.
The opportunity I am seeing written is an opportunity to change the direction of humanity on this planet. For the first time we are all in the same boat. Suffering through the loss of freedom. Loss of choice. Loss of ability to freely socialize and travel. Loss of income. Loss of business activity.
We readily accept all these restrictions to our freedom and obey and comply with whatever new restrictions our government imposes on us for our own good. Nobody complains about loss of choice nobody complains of loss of freedom, nobody complains of loss of work or income. There are no demonstrations on the streets to resist this loss of freedom or choice.
We see our sky clearing from the pollution over China and Italy, the canals of Venice are suddenly clear. What does this tell me? We can change our behaviour overnight!
Abrupt drastic change does not have to come from the barrel of a pandemic. This pandemic is rather mild when you put it in context with other causes of death in the world. CANCER is also a “pandemic” mostly stemming from polluted air, water, earth and our food supply. We now know that we can change and reduce pandemics by changing our ingrained behaviours. We can do the same for other “pandemics” like heart attacks and strokes, cancers and alzheimers by simply cleaning up our air, water, earth and our food supply. Diabetes is another pandemic that will be reduced once we stop the consumption of junk food. Nature can revive itself if only we stop polluting it. This is the giant message in the Venice canals, the air quality over China and italy. The reclaiming of our land and food quality will take more time but now everything is possible. We have proven to ourselves that we can be disciplined and we can change our long term ingrained negative behaviours in a twinkling of an eye.
This is the time for deep reflection and personal change. Look around you things will never be the same again unless you do nothing. Doing nothing will result in more of the same. Lies, deceit, pain and suffering death and destruction.
We now have a golden opportunity to reboot our societies and make a fresh start away from consumerism and into sustainable growth.
The choice is yours. If you do nothing this will not end well, it will get worse. You will keep electing officials that lie to you by promising whatever you want to hear appealing to the lowest common denominator and then make your life a living hell. The choice is yours.
Make it a good one if not for yourselves consider your children or those you love.
