When I was younger, I read a book that touched me deeply …Victor Frankl’s book: Man in search of meaning
It was Frankl’s description of life in Nazi deathcamps from 1942-45 in which most of
his family and his pregnant wife perished, but he survived
Frankl was a Viennese psychiatrist, and he later argued that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how we cope with it, find meaning in it and move forward with renewed purpose.
He
definitively has, after these indescribably traumatic experiences, found a way to give meaning to the apparently meaningless horror, by creating his “logo therapy” helping others to make sense of the trauma’s in their lives.
We cannot compare what we as a human kind are going through at the moment, linked to the pandemic, with some of the horrors of the past and yet I do think we also need to find some kind of meaning for ourselves individually, and also for us all collectively,
if we want to “move forward with renewed purpose”
May be it is still too soon to “see everything clearly”, but I personally heard this HUGE Mindfulness bell telling us to stop, to slow down, to look deeply, to come
back to ourselves,to together care and protect the most vulnerable, from the very start of this crisis…the day we cancelled our journey to Vietnam on the 10th March…I knew we had to listen carefully to the sound of this HUGE Cosmic
bell….and to accept and to say : This is it!
All conditions that created this “pandemic” and its consequences, have been in the making for a long time…All was going much too fast for everyone, yes I think for
everyone,
Always more, always faster, always expanding…economy was “overheating”... so much stuff, so much trash, the way we treat animals, nature and the way we treat our elders and small children and all those that are
vulnerable, was coming to a breaking point…
It was not the virus alone that created the collapse, but ALL these conditions united that gave rise to this urgent question of “meaning” that we all hopefully should ask ourselves
and each other now…how do we want to live, how do we treat ourselves, our elders, our children, vulnerable members of society, how do we relate to animals plants and minerals, to nature as our base, our home …I hope we all take time to rethink,
to reimagine, to refocus on what really matters
What makes sens to me...what gives meaning to me in this very special challenge and time :
To slow down…yes definitively
To stop…yes
To relax
To meditate
To go on daily walks in nature, to contemplate and observe with gratitude its incredible beauty and resilience, learning from her impermanence dailyI
Taking time for essential living skills: cleaning, caring for the garden,
cooking …eating and sleeping well ....
Taking time for what is essential for me : caring for family, friends and close and wider community through prayers, zooms, skypes, phone calls
Apreciating to spend this time with my Beloved
Being useful in many different and humble ways
Taking time to listen, to the suffering of the world,
Taking time to observe carefully what is happining in and around me
Taking time to appreciate art, literature,
poetry, theater ( I watched Shakespeare plays online !) paintings etc etc
Taking time to read, to be silent, to have deep conversations, to rest, to laugh ( yes Tho and me laugh quite a lot these days)
Taking time to catch up
with my work in a peaceful way, with pauses and time for reflections
Taking time to feel, to hear the “new wanting to emerge” without haste or impatience
Taking time to BREATHE with the World to feel our Interdependence
Now that we start to de-confine I think we should all realise that this is as very precious moment.
For those of us who go to meditation retreats we know the importance to carefully “go back to the market place” Transitions are extremely
important…giving it time and space for the new to emerge and not to fall right away back into the “old” patterns……yes we want life to go back “to normal” but hopefully we take a step at a time so that what we have
learned and experienced can help us to “move forward with renewed purpose and love”