What an Opportunity by Janet Hill
One of my favorite scenes in movies comes from O God, Book II. God, being played by George Burns, is in conversation with the young girl, Tracy, about why there is pain and suffering in the world. He tells her that he never figured out how to make something one sided. Watch the clip here.
The trauma we are living through isn’t one-sided. Sure, it is traumatic and awful, but it also is a golden opportunity. One thing we have learned from the trauma of COVID-19 is that our world doesn’t have to be what it was. We have an opportunity to make a real change in our culture. I recently read a blog entitled, “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslight” by Julio Vincent Gambuto. In it, he says, “Well, the treadmill you’ve been on for decades just stopped. Bam! And that feeling you have right now is the same as if you’d been thrown off your Peloton bike and onto the ground . . . . I hope you might consider this: What happened is inexplicably incredible. It’s the greatest gift ever unwrapped. Not the deaths, not the virus, but The Great Pause. It is, in a word, profound. Please don’t recoil from the bright light beaming through the window. I know it hurts your eyes. It hurts mine, too. But the curtain is wide open. What the crisis has given us is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see ourselves and our country in the plainest of views. At no other time, ever in our lives, have we gotten the opportunity to see what would happen if the world simply stopped.”
The Great Pause allows us to look at the world differently and to examine the solutions to the world’s problems in a new light. Gambuto’s hypothesis is that there will be huge pressure from businesses, governments, organizations, and even one another to return to what was because it’s “normal.” But, we don’t have to do so.
We can change our personal patterns and choices for the better. We have the opportunity to “take a deep breath, ignore the deafening noise, and think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. This is our chance to define a new version of normal, a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to get rid of [things] and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud” (Gambuto). This is the biggest opportunity we will ever have to change our world for the better. We can do that by the choices we make in our personal lives. We can change our communities by how we volunteer and what organizations we support. We can change our government by how we vote and by being educated voters. But only if we resist the overwhelming urge, that comes from within us and from without, to return to what was, as quickly as possible. Let’s be intentional. Let’s show our love and concern for one another. Let’s not miss this opportunity.