Going Back To The Way Things Were

I find myself cycling through that feeling almost every single day, wishing this would all go away. Thinking to myself: I wish we could go back to the way things were.  

And I know I am not alone with those feelings. 

I was talking with a friend, Leslie, earlier this week, and I said something to that effect; "When things go back to the way they were..." And for a brief moment, it seemed the two of us coalesced together around that. 

But then she shared a quick story with me. She talked about having that exact same feeling during her pregnancy; using those same words - wanting to go back to the way things were, pre-pregnancy; her previous lifestyle, freedom, emotional normalcy, even her body. And then she told me about a conversation she had with a friend who'd already been through her own pregnancy. After lobbing in her "I wish I could go back to the way things were", her friend stopped her. 

"You'll never go back to the life you had."  

A pretty expected statement coming from a woman who's already been through it and experienced the magic that lies on the other side of pregnancy.  

After Leslie shared that with me, she talked about her own perspective shifting around what we're all going through now. It was her pregnancy that gave birth to a whole new way life, way of living, and by that, it was as if she was saying to me, "Why would you want to go back to the way things were?"  

And as my conversation with Leslie continued, it became clear to me... I got it. Yet, at the same time, I also get my own honest feelings of wanting to go back to a safer time; with less suffering. I imagine the pain people are going through, how people are experiencing this so much worse; the suffering, the toll on people's lives is horrific, and we all know that it's going to get worse. We know that. 

But as I sit here today thinking about what's on the other end of this; I don't want to go back to the way things were.

To an unfair corporate structure, broken healthcare system, a mechanized educational system, a culture hyper-focused on material gains, to extraordinary wealth inequality, to overconsumption, to the destruction of our environment, to how we ignore strangers, how we look the other way, how we just seem to accept injustice, how we talk about things but don't put actions to words, and how we protect the status quo even when the status quo is wrong.

There's another way. I believe that on the other end of this period of suffering, we can usher in a new error of humanity; a renaissance if you will.  

We do that by learning how to live with deep family and communal roots, where we take care of each other, truly have each other's backs. We can learn to fall in love with ourselves and each other in a deeper way, and learn how to engage in society by us all doing our parts for the greater good. We stop exploiting the planet and mistreating each other. We can be compassionate to strangers, we learn to sacrifice, not for ourselves, but for others, and we bring into focus a new awareness of our true potential connectedness; to each other and to something greater than our individual needs.