Will You Recognize Me?

Did I really need a pandemic to force me to look?

At my world?

At poverty?

At inequalities?

At my government?

At my priorities?

At my neighbors?

At my spending?

At my fragility?

At my excuses?

At my naiveté?

At my strengths?

At my weaknesses?

At my truth?

At my relationships?

At myself

Did I need to be forced to wear a mask in order to silence the voices, starting with my own?

I have spent the majority of my adult life searching for myself, my meaning.

I have spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on books and courses and degrees and certifications, all designed to bring me closer to my center, my light, my power.

I even contemplated attending the seminary, not years ago with the aspirations of a young man, no quite recently, even after being crowned a husband and a father.

Always with the idea of service in mind.

When I complete this I will be able to help others.

Wow, that one more certification will surely be the one that will shower me with clarity and insight and all the knowledge I need to be useful...In a special way, a different way, a big way.

My therapist once asked me if I was afraid that I would leave this life without achieving my "One Big Thing".

I shrugged my shoulders and made the appropriate, hmm? sound as if we were really onto something, thats what you do in therapy no?

And yet always coming back to the realization that this was not entirely for the sake of others, no I'm not nearly as selfless as that.

I was the lost and untethered soul. 

Waiting on my own salvation and praying to find it in that long and tired-less list owned by and created for others.

My "One Big Thing", is there really such a thing?

Are we defined by our achievements?

Is the person who has claimed their big one any further along than someone who has had many small ones or perhaps even none at all?

These ideas grand of achievements seem to be taking a hit these days.

Isolated as we are, as we all are, has been creating some very sacred space for allowing the unknown to visit us as never before.

This poem by Lynn Ungar has me thinking..

What if the virus arrived to force us to do what we would simply would not do on our own.

What if from the these rubles a new society springs forth?

As Lynn writes, a great awakening.

Unprecedented times they are calling it, but can that really be so?

Have we not already been here before in some shape or form as a race?

Uncomfortable perhaps but unprecedented, I'm not too sure.

Did we not once spend more time with family, tending gardens, traveling less, trading eggs for milk?

Was this so long ago that we cant even imagine it any longer?

If we are spared from this virus and I pray that we are, what do we want to be as we emerge?

How do we want to begin to interact with others? 

What will we look like when we remove those protective masks, masks that I dare to say we had been wearing long before the arrival of this virus.

Will we recognize one another as we slowly reenter society?

I for one hope not.

Magical things are happening on the planet.

Always the duality between life and death, just as the Universe created it to be.

But so much more life.

Skies clearing from decades of pollutants.

Mountain tops becoming once again visible.

Oceans and lakes and rivers thriving with life renewed.

Families engaging in meaningful and long overdue conversations.

Trust and faith being laid at new feet.

Meaning being found in the simplest of places, where they have probably been all along, barely hidden and yet they had seemed invisible to our eyes, that is until these days forced us to look.

What about us as individuals, I hear of layers being stripped away, new habits being formed. realizations popping up here and there that what once seemed so all encompassing and important are not really that at all.

Dreams have begun to change collectively. 

People from all over the world have been sharing that sleep brings them new inspirations, bold colors with such a vividness that they could swear they were physically there.

Conversations with those long gone so real that the faint scent of them lingers even when the words have stopped.

Researchers are already trying to explain these phenomenons away.

Will we let them?

And if not then what can all of this really mean?

Who will we become if we allow all of this to remain with us even when the gates are opened?

Will you know who I am when I lift my mask?

Will I recognize you when you knock at my door?

What will we say to one another if perhaps physical contact becomes taboo?

Well, we can always start with, hello, so nice to finally see you.

Namaste 

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