The Time is Now

In Ecclesiastes chapter 3 we read these well-known words: “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.”  Here are a few that seem especially relevant for this COVID -19 season:

• A time to weep and a time to laugh
• A time to mourn and a time to dance
• A time to embrace and a time to refrain
• A time to be silent and a time to speak

There is a time to learn from history and a time to listen to the future.   Many people have noted that this pandemic feels similar to 9/11, when our world changed overnight, and fear took root.   Because of the global scale and the dramatic ripple effects of this crisis, some point to World War II as the last time the world experienced change on the scale we are living through now.   Whether these turn out to be fair comparisons or not remains to be seen.  Looking forward there will be important choices to be made which could lead us deeper into fear, lead us back to business as usual while ignoring the bigger underlying problems being exposed by this crisis, or lead us to transformational changes.

There is a wonderful book called Presence by Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers.  Presence is a concept borrowed from the natural world, in which the whole is entirely present in any of its parts, and the parts exist as embodiments of the whole.  They outline a process for learning when what we know from the past leaves us blind to profound shifts when whole new forces shaping the future arise.  They outline a process for taking time to suspend our habitual ways of thinking and examining our mental models and assumptions, redirecting our attention to the source rather than the immediate things in front of us, letting go and surrendering our need to control, and then opening ourselves to the future that is trying to emerge.  This internal development is an ongoing journey and their version includes what they call seven spaces:  awareness, stopping, calmness, stillness, peace, true thinking, and attainment.  When you reach true calmness of mind, then you’ll be able to reach true quietness or stillness. When you have stillness, you’ll be in a state of peacefulness in which you can truly think. When you can truly think, then you can attain the goals that you’re supposed to achieve. 

It is time for stillness, deep learning, and change.   The coronavirus crisis has presented us with an opportunity for a reset and what we do with it is critical.  As a society we have drifted in the direction of trading freedoms for a sense of security.  Anyone over a certain age can see dramatic differences in the freedom we had as children to roam and create our own adventures compared to the children of today.  We remember the time when we could meet loved ones at the airport gates. Consider the movement towards fear and hostility regarding immigrants.  This crisis has amplified things and it feels like a pandemic of fear; of getting sick, of strangers getting too close, of loss of loved ones, jobs, and financial security.   In recent decades we have also been driven culturally by values of greed and self-centered priorities which have created extreme wealth and power disparities and put us on a path of destroying the planet and threatening the extinction of all species.  This is all like chasing after the wind. 

Social distancing is necessary right now and we need to protect our public health, but as the threat of this virus subsides, will we slide deeper into fear and permanently accept giving up more freedom to create the illusion of safety?  Or will we remember how precious it is to live in community, have contact with one another, and have the freedom to assemble?  Can we acknowledge that risk is inherent in living and choose to be fully alive?  Will we continue to allow the values of selfishness to set the course of our society?  Or will we embrace the values that affirm life such as compassion, fairness, kindness, passion, adventure, respect for one another and the earth?  We have seen these values coming forward in good people everywhere during this crisis, as they always have in crises past.  Individually, we can choose to live these higher values, see the world more holistically, invite spiritual renewal, and help turn our societies to affirm life.  Collectively, we can demand that our leaders stand up and develop policies, programs, and structures based in humanistic principles. There is a future waiting to emerge that depends on us to co-create.  It will emerge only to the extent we are willing and able to commit to operating from our deepest values, focus our attention on what really matters and the problems we need to solve, and take actions based in the future rather than patterns of the past.  There is a time and it is now.