Most people alive today have never lived though something that impacted the entire planet. But we’re living it now. Businesses and places of worship around the world have paused their operations. In many places, travel has been stopped or restricted. It seems as if the entire world is waiting, and life as we’ve known it has been turned upside down.
Here’s something for you to keep in mind:
Your life is not on pause.
There are many things that have ground to a halt lately, but your life isn’t one of them. Maybe your routines have, maybe even your job, but while all that sucks big time, YOU are still alive. So, it comes down to how you respond to present circumstances. If the situation caused by the coronavirus caught you off guard, as it did most people, now’s the time to learn how to prepare yourself for whatever’s next. That’s not a pessimistic statement by the way, because life has always, will always, be filled with things you didn’t expect.
Only you can define what changes are needed in your life. For me, I’ve learned there are a few I want to make in my own life. I’ve made many already, and the changes I made in 2018-2019 put me in a much better place and have enabled me to make it though the global meltdown. Of course, I’ve been impacted just like everyone else. I’m a writer and writing is all I do. My money comes from freelance writing work, which has nearly dried up in the past month. Fortunately, I chose to walk a minimalist lifestyle and because of that, I’m surviving- for now. Like I said, I have more changes to make.
If nothing else is revealed from this global pandemic, it has shown how dependent we are on the system, and when that system breaks down our lives break down with it. I’m not naive, but I think we can change this. Maybe not all at once, and maybe everyone won’t agree, but a population that is more self-sufficient, and not enslaved to material possessions and debt, is a population that is better able to endure the hard times when they come, and they always come. Life is a series of good times, and hard times. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just life.
Change doesn’t come easy though, does it? I mean, we all say we want change. We say we want the world to be peaceful, laid back, and less stressful. We hate how commercialized everything has become, that greed rules our countries as corporations continue to rape the earth of its every last resource while buying laws to protect themselves. We hate the rat race, traffic, soul-sucking jobs, and that we have to work ourselves to death to pay bills. We crave communion with nature, music, and the arts.
But here’s the rub. We dictate how much of this plays out. Corporations rape the earth of its resources so they can manufacture the stuff we buy. Greed rules our countries because of consumers, that’s you and me by the way, and the money we hand over for stuff is what fuels the machine.
Before you lash out, I think it’s fine to have some stuff. I have stuff too. SOME stuff. Not ALL the stuff. Look at all the storage unit businesses that exist, and for the primary purpose of storing our excess stuff.
It isn’t that ownership of things is bringing us down, but that we’ve allowed things to have ownership over us.
The degree to which we change that is up to us. I don’t have a list of solutions that will solve the world’s problems, but I have a list of solutions for my own life and how I will participate in a global community.
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