Standstill

Tall clumps of fresh grass stick up through the lumpy rug of snow and the pear blossoms shiver in the wind. It reminds me how little control we have over nature. Yet over the years we’ve managed to shift weather patterns, melt glaciers, warm oceans, all of which now threaten our very existence.

But in the last months something we cannot see has stopped what hours and years of negotiation, protest, debate and warnings have failed to do. The air in Wuhan is the cleanest it has been in decades and the carbon levels over Italy have decreased dramatically because air, car and bus travel have been reduced in a matter of days to a level not seen for about forty years. In cities people are hearing many more kinds of birdsong and smelling the honey-scented blossoms and all because a microbe has brought us to a standstill.

It’s not enough of course this brief respite. Unless we all decide that cleaner air and a quieter world is worth a radical change in lifestyle, in our own lifestyles. Can we use this crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, as an opportunity for change? Is it possible? Are we capable of changing our habits and adjusting even the way we think about the world and our relationship to it? I’m grateful for this short pause to consider these questions more closely. What do you think the world needs and what changes can you make in order to play a part in this necessary shift?