Time To Rewrite Our Stars - Has COVID-19 Gifted Us With Blank Slate?

At this point in time we must all be wondering...what happens next in this story?

Well my friends, the next chapter of our lives post coronavirus aren’t yet written...it’s a blank slate with no rule book. This time, we CAN rewrite our own destiny, simply by stepping back, taking a breather and using our IMAGINATION.

The virus has presented us with the most unique opportunity the world has ever seen...we now have a chance to change our collective BEHAVIOUR, which ultimately influences our actions and therefore all of our current economic, social and environmental systems on which we depend.

This is not some positive thinking bullsh*t. In psychology, they refer to it as ‘pattern interruption’. When a certain behaviour has become so engrained into a person or culture (for example depression) it can be very hard to change without a ‘shock’ which aims to interrupt the current or collective way of thinking.

Maybe you suddenly get fired from a job, and you were frightened to leave that security initially...but you ended up growing in ways you couldn’t have even begun to imagine prior but it ends up being the best thing to ever happen to you.

Maybe you or a family member found out they have cancer and are given 6 months to live. For the first time, you realise you took life for granted and start to appreciate the little things...you go on more adventures. You can’t believe you never did these things before...what a time waste!

Only once you have this ‘interruption’ or ‘shock’ can you provide a platform to condition new behaviours that better serve you and others.

Make no mistake, COVID-19 has brought about a major interruption to our every day patterns...on a global scale. It has brought us temporary pain, loss, anger, frustration and anxiety.

99% of all people respond to stimulus in the same way...meaning we have very similar behaviours that run like patterns, and once you begin to understand those patterns you can ultimately predict human behaviour.

Our collective behaviours as a species and western culture towards the natural world has resulted in thinking that we are essentially above nature and not a part of it. As a result we have raped, pillaged and completely dominated everything we have touched without realising the consequences of doing so.

We’ve designed an entire society and economy based on natural resource extraction, and as a consequence we face the longer term challenge of our rapidly changing climate that has the potential to end our species entirely...and within the next few decades.

This behaviour of domination that we have been running has become a sustained pattern, it has formed neurological pathways in our brain that become stronger every time we work them...like a muscle.

Even though environmental challenges like climate change didn’t cause COVID-19, the rapidly warming world has created the perfect opportunity for disease to thrive and spread.

We are now facing a reality we didn’t expect.

We just need to remember that through this global pandemic and ‘pattern interruption’, the world has finally set us FREE.

Free to release ourselves from our fossil fuel dependant society. Free to transform each other to become a kinder and more compassionate species.

Free to love harder, free to find out what matters to us most in our lives. Free to watch the sun rise and set without the constant pressures of every day ‘normal’ life.

Free to think differently, to do differently. Free to breath, free to dream of the world we wish to see for ourselves and our kids. Free to rewrite our own destinies and carve the way for a better future.

We now have perhaps the only chance we will ever have to understand and value nature in the same way the indigenous do...we can THINK DIFFERENTLY about our current behaviours and the destructive systems we have in place as a result.

By placing a value on nature, we place a value on carbon, the building block of life. And once we have this perspective change, we can envision an economy based on the REGENERATION of nature...not degeneration.

Furthermore, by doing this we can reverse climate change entirely and save our species from the current path of destruction we are leading.

Is this what it truly feels like to be human? With all the external stimulus stripped away and left with nothing but our own hearts and minds...is this humanity in it’s truest form?

We have been reborn, for the very first time. The world in it’s infinite wisdom and power has gifted us with the opportunity to rewrite our stars and dream of endless possibility.

We can and will write a new story because this time there isn’t a rule book for what happens next, this time each and every one of us are holding the pen to our own individual chapters that contribute to the whole.

What happens next is our choice, YOUR choice....but for now, dream of what is possible for your life.

Then live it.

Written by Environmental Scientist Khory Hancock