What We Do Next [part 3 of 3]
So much of American culture demands that we achieve, succeed, and meet the next bar held out in front of us. We have forgotten who we are and why we are here. Taking an honest look at our inner landscape, finding spaciousness to really reflect on our feelings and needs can be the most vulnerable thing we do. It is hard to sit with ourselves when we might feel pain or are uncertain of what lurks in the deep hidden pockets of our consciousness.
The more we can connect to our own or other’s needs, the more compassion we can show ourselves. Offering empathy to ourselves enables us to offer it to others. If what we do next is counter-cultural to the American tendencies to consume, achieve, and be independent, we must first have compassion for ourselves, our missteps, and fears on this path through a challenging terrain.
An offering of self-forgiveness makes space inside ourselves to truly own our feelings, unmet needs, and offer a compassionate apology to another. Having compassion for neglecting our own needs allows us to step back a little without having to choose between our own needs and another’s. It is possible to hold both equally.
If there is one thing this pandemic has offered us immediately, it is the slowing down of just about everything: school, business, daily life. There just is no hustle and bustle, offering us all the opportunity to move with more awareness and consciousness in our daily actions. The Coronavirus pandemic has changed our lives over a very short period of time probably forever. The loss of the familiar ways of living, shopping, traveling, and connecting are numerous. The last many weeks feel like years and much of it is a blur. Taking the opportunity of the slowing down this pandemic has caused is also time to honor those losses.
Our Emerging Ubuntu Spirit: In light of the new normal that the Coronavirus has imposed upon the world, communities are coming together despite the lack of united leadership from elected officials. Ironically (but potentially to our ultimate advantage), Daniel Goleman, in his book Social Intelligence, likens our ability to connect with other humans as he describes how “our brains interlock, spreading our emotions like a virus” (2006, p. 12).
If what we do next begins with self-compassion and from knowing our own inner spark, our resulting compassionate connections with others will strengthen and spread, forming the networks we need to survive and thrive in this altered world. As human beings, when we are open to our own vulnerability and empathic nature, we have a the unique gift of what Daniel Seigel calls mindsight allowing us to accurately infer another person’s thoughts and feelings. When we connect from this place of knowing and empathy, others will be drawn into the larger circle. Our communities will become united in our efforts to support ourselves and each other. We will, for example, be able find compassion for those without a back-up plan who fearfully hoard food.
The Coronavirus pandemic challenges our resilience. Goleman describes how our ability to bounce back from failure, rejection, or trauma depends upon our “foundations of resilience, the ability to recover from distress” (2006, p. 166). Some individuals have built “scaffolding for a resilient lifelong sense of themselves and their relationships” (Goleman, 2006, p. 166) either from secure attachments of their birth or through nurturing adult relationships. Perhaps the most resilient among us will offer a foothold for other members of our community to do the same.
Goleman also notes, when we “become more emotionally interdependent, [we] play an active role in the regulation of each other’s very physiology” (2015, p. 244).
This is truly hopeful. Instead of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, we might begin to hold each other a little closer, sharing our resilience as sustenance for what we all do next. With this in mind, those of us with the most privilege economically, socially, and emotionally also have the space and opportunity to listen and meet others from their place of need. We can build our resilience and nurture the revolutionary Ubuntu spirit that is already a seed of our humanity.
The Coronavirus is part of our systems on every level, and it will not be ignored. This virus has nestled itself into our very existence. It is part of us now and it has altered our behaviors drastically. While we have isolated, the earth is finding healing as we stop or dramatically reduce flying, driving, and buying. As world travel and commerce comes to a screeching halt, we bear witness as water runs clear in the canals of Venice and scientists note reduced greenhouse gasses and pollution (Chow, 2020).
The virus portends a revolution for us to come home to ourselves, our basic needs, and reclaim our place in nature.
If what we do next is revolutionary, then we will drink of the Ubuntu spirit and find a tenderness toward each other and the natural world.
As a human race, we have probably never needed art and poetry more than at this moment. Our existence as a species is bound up together. Art and poetry have a way of penetrating the divisions of culture, race, religion, and politics. Art and poetry convey truths that are timeless. The poem, And the People Stayed Home by Kitty O’Meara, offer us revolutionary actions if we are willing:
And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply.
Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows.
And the people began to think differently. And the people healed.
And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.
And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.
What we do next matters.
If we choose to not blame, shame, or judge, and instead to empathize, show compassion, and be curious about the Other, then our circle widens. As our circle widens to include those with whom we disagree politically, ethically, morally, culturally, and religiously, there are fewer and fewer threats behind us. If we include ourselves in the space we hold for others, our needs, too, will be met. We no longer need our allies to ‘have our backs’—because we are all in the same circle. What we need most is to have others stand by us. I invite you to stand next to me for what we do next.
