Reflections on Covid-19
Monday 11 May 2020
What story are you telling yourself?
COVID-19 has brought the world to a STOP! Many world leaders, as well as journalists, have used war-time imagery, which for some has been compelling: it identifies a common enemy (the virus), a strategy (“flatten the curve,”), the front-line warriors (health-care personnel), the home-front (people isolating at home), the traitors and deserters (people breaking the physical-distancing rules).
However, there has also been some ground-up messages of hope. On this page I collect some that have appealed to me.
"New Zealand-born poet Tomos Roberts' video, The Great Realisation, has already racked up more than twenty-four million views across Facebook and YouTube - and is broadcast in full below. Roberts - aka Tom Foolery - thinks the world will be a better place after the coronavirus pandemic than before, explaining it in feelgood form in the four-minute clip.
In the optimistic, forward-looking poem, Roberts speaks to a child about how the world was before the virus took over. People were too dependent on technology, there was rampant overconsumption, and global warming was a major problem. But as the pandemic struck and people were forced into lockdown, they started to speak to each other a lot more, especially loved ones. The planet started to recuperate as factories and industries paused. Shutting down much of the world for the past month had provided a great opportunity to rejig the world order. "Let's think constructively: Are there steps that we can take as individuals or as societies that would lessen the suffering of people and increase the joy?" he said. "If you were going to aim for something, I think that would be a nice place to start and you can see what happens after that." (Kiwi poet's viral fairytale strikes a chord in Hollywood, Star News, 6 May 2020)
This is a letter Ian Piper, School Principal at British International School Washington sent to his school community: a beautiful call to arms to become more fully human "to strive to be the best parent | partner | friend | colleague that we can be"
This inspiring video, One for All, is created by Sir Ken Robinson and Kiran Bir Sethi (founder of Design for Change). It calls us to claim our humanity: "We are born human by chance, but we become humane by choice" (Kiran). This "is an opportunity to rethink what all this is going to look like when we go back to school. This is the time to turn our creative powers to envisioning conditions where we will flourish, and to shake off some of the ideas we have inherited from the past 300 years about how the world ought to be and to look at how it could be." (Ken Robinson)
Kitty O'Meara, a retired teacher from Madison, Wisconsin, posted this prose poem on her personal Facebook.
“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." ~ Author: Kitty O'Meara (art: Anna Speshilova)
Tags: images of COVID-19