Ok. It's March 31st. We are somewhere in the Corona pandemic. How do you experience the situation at the moment?
On my side, I am experiencing it in two or three ways.
First, on the personal level, I experience this as a time, during which I keep the social distance, I feel it just as a physical part of it. But I want to keep and maintain the closeness with all my friends. I want to bring them close to my heart. I don't want them to go away. I want to feel them. I want to feel the struggle, that we are struggling together, not alone, but together in our inner closeness. We are close. We are together. And I feel this is very important.
So, I feel I'm open, connecting to my friends all over the world, within my community. As I'm sitting in my house or in my room, I think of them, I feel "OK, my friends, you are there. No, don't give up." In this physical distance, I'm am close, I'm just right in your heart and your right in my heart. Let's keep on fighting." Let us keep on facing this pandemic in a positive way so that we can remain positive to ourselves and support ourselves to continue to live together, because, as long as we wake up the next day, that means we still have life to live. That is on my personal level.
On my community level. I feel that my community is very strong. I feel it very much, because I see that right now, that the women, the men, the youth, the children they say: "OK, we have been together, we have been eating together, we have been sleeping together, all this. But now here is a time, that forces us to stay distant. But we feel this is not a natural thing. It's something that can bring us closer to the soil, bring us closer to see exactly what we are doing, to make sure that the other people and ourselves see the way we have been living together. How have we met? Where have we gone wrong that we might have brought this to ourselves?
Now, feeling these people and how they build resilience makes me feel we are strong. And the issue of cleaning hands, it's now part of the community. And I they say: "OK, we are cleaning this, but how do we clean our hearts? Are we cleaning our hearts too? The person we were hating before, the person we have not been talking before. Can we talk? Can we share? Can I forgive? Can we try to build reconciliation? And see that as our hands are getting clean can our hearts are also getting clean. And this will be like, leaning the air, cleaning ourselves, and creating a new life. So that when this is over, we know who we are and where we go together.
I see it in terms of how my community is preparing land, because the longer rains are soon to come. So everybody is busy in the farm, preparing this. And how they speak about the Corona pandemic... They speak about it as a huge buffalo that we cannot defeat it. Because once you see buffalo you see death. So it's time we practice our inner death before the physical death comes.
So sometimes I feel great. I feel that I'm very lucky to be in this community right now because there is no fear.
The third way I look at it is how this pandemic is proclaimed in the media and how the governments are taking measures to try to enforce that the people stay safe. Some of these measures are very new, like the social distancing for instance. Here in my country, we have a curfew. We cannot leave the house after 7:00 in the evening until morning 7:00. And this is something that is new in the culture. And we have to adapt and this is also creating a bit of fear.
The role of the authority is to create awareness, because our level of education is different, our level of understanding is different. But I believe we have a natural communication within us as a human being so we can understand even without speaking. So I feel this is the time that the authorities also have to feel with the people and if possible, to bring the people closer and the people to bring authority closer so that we don't collapse. So that we can face the situation and fight it together.
And it seems that the curfew is accepted, but it was a struggle for the days after the announcement and enforcement of the curfew. some people have gone to court. Some people have won. We need to create a space for natural communication during pandemics. I think natural communication is really, really important.
Even during this time of pandemics, because it creates a space not only for talking, but for feeling. Right now as I'm sitting here miles away from you, but I feel so much connected because I feel you right. And I think this is the space that the Corona pandemic also creates. I totally agree that it is there and it's the pandemic during our era, over our lifetime today, but together, we may find a solution that we may live with it, or eradicate it.
Or somehow, we can find and copy the resiliency of the trees during pandemics. Because trees also face pandemics like this. Bugs, diseases. How do they communicate? And how do they cope and power themselves and become stronger during the storm. And a few branches will go down but the trees will remain.
Beautiful. Thank you for sharing this. So we talked about the current situation and you also talked about what you learn about your community, about yourself. I want to invite you to to look ahead. So think of a time where we learned to live with that virus. What do you want more of or less of in your life, your community or your society?
First, what I would love to see more is how we can maintain together our inner connectivity. Because this will make us live better together in the virus era or without it. This depends of course on the world mechanism, scientists and researchers work together to find a solution. But that is on the part of the scientists. But in that part of us as people, we need to be more connected.
We need to use hearts more, much more than our brains. Because our brains make our body weak. Once you use your brain too much, your body somehow weakens. If you try to listen and open your heart and to feel the other person it is even nourishing your body. So in future, after this, I just want to see this connectivity. And I think with this feeling, hearing and listening to our hearts, we will create more peace together. And this will also open and broaden our innovativeness and creativity, because we feel more safe, regardless of what is happening.
But as long as we maintain the social distance we have to maintain our inner attitude of closeness so we broaden our thinking capacity. We can broaden our humanity. We can broaden our peace building. We can also get our own communities more involved to create resiliency in a peaceful way. And this will incorporate nature and how we live together. Because once we are adopted to cleanness, we clean our air, we plant more trees, we still create that closeness. Not only to our bodies, not only to ourselves as humanity, but in a holistic way. So that is my dreaming..
And in this dreaming I see a very healthy and just environment where we all can live to our fullest potential.
Thank you. Maybe you answered already the last question, but I will ask it anyway. If you think of the future, what is your wildest dream, your highest dream of what could happen after going through this pandemic? What don't you even allow yourself sometimes to dream of?
I know that in any way, someday I will die. That I know. And because I am aware of that, it does not matter what will take me home! Maybe I fly, maybe I walk there or maybe I sleep and I find myself there. I don't know. So there is no way I can be afraid, fearful or panicking. I am aware that I will go there.
So the thing is how do I prepare myself to go there? How do we prepare ourselves to go there? Do you want to go there with panic? Do you want to go while crying? Do you want to go there with a lot of fear or do you want to go there peacefully? It is how you make it. So this time of pandemic, for me, is just a reminder for everyone. And if our friends with whom we have lived together in this world have already crossed to the other side because of this pandemic, I feel sad about that.
But they are home right now. And with that, I feel they are looking at me and say: "Hey man, stop fearing! There is a place for you here, just take your time over there. Maybe you are not meant to come here through the Corona virus”.
Maybe something else will bring you here. So take that with full awareness and let others be aware. We have to be aware that it is here. That we do not have to panic. That we do not make our future hostile, because of this fear that we are going to die. Who told you are going to die because of Corona? Who told you that? People get sick and people get healed.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
