In Wuhan, they're hearing birds chirp for the first time in years. The canals of Venice are running clear and filled with fish. The air in Italy's beloved Alps has become clearer.
And it's all because of COVID-19. As human activity has plummeted in the regions most affected by the virus, we have seen a bloom in their environment. Where yang no longer dominates, yin grows. Where commerce screeches to a halt, life shouts in joy.
There's a lesson for us here, should we choose to learn it. For the first time in most of our lives, we have a chance to see first-hand the results of a massive shift in human behavior. We can understand empirically the benefits if we should take some of these behaviors to heart and bring them forward into the future.
While we are self-quarantined, why not use this unusual silence to listen to ourselves? Just a few brief moments in our lives to listen to what is deep in our hearts, what we truly need for our happiness.
Do we really need 63 different shampoos, or do we need the quiet buzzing of bees as they keep our plants alive? How much of those empty grocery shelves that we stare at are normally filled with redundancy and excess? Must we run here, there and everywhere in automobiles, searching and never finding what is already in our own house, or would we rather feel the sun in our faces and breathe fresh, clean air?
If you are self-quarantined, you have already made the hardest of jumps to a new way of living. When health has returned to the world, are you ready to take some of those changes with you?
This puzzle reminds me of a quandary many of my chronic illness patients face. They have identified with their disorder for so long that they cannot imagine another way of being or of behaving.
Sometimes the pull of the familiar is too strong, and they drop out of care prematurely. In getting better, they are losing a part of their self-identity and they become frightened. Scared of what may be, even though that future is healthier and has less pain.
Sometimes the crisis comes later on. They have adopted the new ways that make them stronger but cannot maintain the necessary changes in the face of old habits.
This is us. This is humanity right now. We can see plain as daylight the benefits of remodeling our behavior on the world on which we depend. But how many of us are willing to turn that newly-informed gaze inward and commit to the changes that will make us, as individuals and as a species, healthier?
Of course, I’m not talking about the social distancing. But I am talking about the behaviors that make that possible, and how they can be recombined in new ways to form communities with new boundaries, new customs, new values.
One of the tenets of Traditional Chinese Medicine is that the human body is a hologram of the universe. That what changes our environment changes us, and what changes us changes our environment. When we engage with any illness, COVID-19 included, on that basis, it can lead us to fundamental, positive changes in how we live life and how everything around us lives.
Here’s an exercise for you: If you are not currently in quarantine, imagine that you are. If you are already quarantined, well, you’ve got a head start. Now take a minute or two or five and imagine the world that you would like to see when you finally walk out your front door again. Is it one full of stress and more isolation and a life measured by the number of different shampoos you can buy? Or is it one which you can see more clearly now, quieter, more measured, your family close around you, your struggles for one moment in abeyance? Which burdens are you ready to pick up when the bell rings and your “normal” world starts again? Which burdens would you like to put down now?
COVID-19 has forced humanity to press the pause button. It is now that we have the chance to redirect ourselves to a healthier self and a healthier planet. It’s our choice.
Choose wisely.