Possibilities of Peace Beyond COVID-19

At the beginning of the virus shelter in, the circle of my life shrunk to one small corner of one small room in my home. There, I did embroidery and watched British TV. It was all I could do.

I held back the tears as a dozen or more students were thrown asunder in the advent of the Coronavirus pandemic. Witnessing their grief, their bewilderment, tears, and anger took several days to work through my system. It was a privilege and a weight. Only quiet could undo the doings.

In the first week, I understood that this pandemic offered us all the opportunities to be bigger than we had been. We had been given the blessings of solitude if only we would take it. We could choose to share, or we could choose to hoard. We could choose to shelter in fear or to shelter in serenity.

The virus is real. The shelter-in order is real. The deaths are really real. Our responses to these circumstances however is well within our capacity to choose. If only we take the leap to be curious, to be open, to be cognitively flexible, to see the gift that time could be, we could change the evolutionary trajectory of humanity going forward. That said, we could also choose to hoard, to shelter in fear, to blame others for the virus, to rail against change. The choice is clearly ours. The evolution of our brains, in response to these environmental pressure, can be in the direction of grace, mercy, forgiveness, acceptance, and letting go. We could equally choose the possibility of resentment, anger, regret, holding grudges, and defending our turf. What a mighty crossroad we appear to be at the age of this pandemic.

This isn’t the only pandemic humanity has faced. In my community, 60 children died in the winter of 1749-1750 from a ‘throat epidemic.’ This small town was a rural collection of farms. Assuredly, many families experienced the loss of more than one child that winter. And we continued. But were we better? Did we know at that time that we could be better?

The Spanish epidemic of 1918 killed dozens of children and adults in the local cemetery near our home in Framingham, Massachusetts. Again, families were decimated and life continued carrying the burdens of grief and the resilience of continuing on.

In the past, perhaps these community successes were circumstantial. The survival if not the thrill of a community was based on the resilience of its members, opportunistic circumstances, and perhaps sheer luck. In this modern age of advanced scientific research into the biology of resilience, thriving, happiness, and well-being create a true north. A direction to follow even if the path cannot be readily seen. That’s because the efforts to run the inner peace circuitry of our brains is more of an indulgence than a way of life. The virus offers us the possibility that this can be our way of life.

Here I begin to think of two John Lennon songs:

Nobody told me there would be days like these

and

I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round

I really love to watch them roll

I just had to let them go.