Instead of Coronavirus, What About…?

Instead of Coronavirus, What About…?

By Jane Tawel

March 9, 2020

 

 

There are a lot of questions surrounding the Coronavirus.  Here are some of mine.

 

How about instead of being so terrified of the spread of Coronavirus around us, we get more terrified of the spread of lies around us?

 

How about instead of canceling events due to the idiocy of Coronavirus mass hysteria, we start canceling all public events due to the idiocy of a nation that refuses to enact laws to protect its citizens from mass shootings?

 

How about instead of wearing more masks around strangers, we wear more smiles instead?

 

What would happen if everyone stockpiled gratitude, in the same way they are stockpiling sanitizer?

 

What if instead of learning more about beating the bad Coronavirus, we learned more about  being good human beings?

 

What if instead of hoarding more toilet paper for our future sh*#%@$ts, we stopped hoarding more and more sh*&$%!@t for our futures?

 

What if instead of storing water in our town halls, we took water to our refugees at our borders?

 

What would happen if we cared more about those we come in contact with, than we care about contracting something from them?

 

What if all the religious people along with cleansing our hands of germs, also cleansed our hearts of sin?

 

How about instead of listening to talking heads, we listened to the needs of those around us?

 

What if instead of walking our beliefs backwards and becoming xenophobes about other people, we believed in the future, and became xenogogues, guiding the world and all the people in it forwards?

 

What if we lived not as if today was the first day we realized we should care about our hygiene, but we lived as if today could be the last day we could tell people we love that we care about them?

 

What if we had as much faith and hope, as we do fear and anxiousness?

 

What if we thought this moment right now, mattered more than any other moment past or present?

 

What if we thought extending a hand in love to our neighbors, could really make as big a difference as coughing into our elbows?

 

What if we saw an impending viral epidemic of Coronavirus as an imaginable viral epiphany of virtue?

 

What if we knew that we would some day die, and so we better start really living today?

 

What if instead of seizing the day to remain in illness-free stasis, we would seize the day as an opportunity for healthy new growth in body, mind, and soul?

 

What if we thought there was really Someone out there worthy of worship, and not just Someone out there who cheered only for our team?

 

What if we thought Virtues were as important as vaccines?

 

What if we believed as strongly in the soul-born Power of Love, as we did in the airborne power of disease?

 

How about instead of believing in worst case scenarios, we start believing the best about other people?

 

What if instead of teaching our children to fear, we taught our children to share?

 

“Woman and children washing hands” by World Bank Photo Collection is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

If the Coronavirus can teach me more than just a bunch of hygienic tips– (and frankly we all should have already been following those tips on staying healthy, so get on board, folks!) —  If I can learn anything from the mass hysteria rollicking through the world right now, I can learn how to be a better human being. But that is something I should be trying to learn every single day I have the privilege of waking up.

 

I should do certain things in order to care for my physical body, my outer-self, but if there is any thing a mass hysteria about a virus can teach me, it is probably more about how to take care of my inner self, my soul.

 

Today I have at least one more day and one more blessed opportunity to:

• Learn more about things that matter.
• Stop wasting time on things that don’t really matter in the long run.
• Get worked up about the pandemic of illnesses humans are causing on our planetary home.
• Love more. Love more. And then love some more.
• Stop hoarding, and begin enjoying.
• Put aside the rigor mortis of despair, and take up the righteousness of worthy causes.
• Kill the germs of inactive narcissism on my hands, and eradicate the lackadaisical selfishness of my soul.
• Irradiate truth and share healing words.
• Take off that which masks me, so I can breathe deeply.
• Support creative people, create supportive networks.
• Value the valuable, cherish the charitable, testify for the truthful.
• Believe that virtue is still viable.
• And then love some more. And then love some more.
• Worship the Eternal, not the temporal.
• Be grateful; sincerely, pro-actively, outward-looking thankful.
• Be a healer, not a hater.
• Feel true pity, not false piety.
• Speak truth.
• Be kind.
• Carpe Diem in Imago Dei.
• Choose to be positive; fight negativity especially in myself.
• Love some more. And then love some more.
• And then love some more.

 

 

Because the fact is, folks, the Coronavirus will come and go. Every virus does. And the truth is that we will each of us come and go as well. Every human being does.

 

Every single one of us living through this latest death scare, will one day be dead and gone. We will each die of something or other,  due to something or other, and something or other will be the thing that kills us. So, frankly, just as we should always have been washing our hands and coughing into our elbows, and being more careful out there, we also should have been living every day as if it mattered a whole lot more how we treated others, how we cared for our own souls, and what we spent our time and resources on.  We shouldn’t live this day any differently than we do any other day and we should also start living this day quite differently than we did yesterday – because today we have one more opportunity to get truly healthy, and stay truly alive –outside and inside ourselves.

 

We should live this day as if it could be our last, but also as if it can be the first – the first day to start over, and do better, and make a difference in someone’s life, and enjoy our world and the people in it. Today is the day I can determine not only what I will protect my body from, but what I will  protect my soul from. Today is the day I can decide what I will feed my body with to make it stronger and healthier, and what I will feed my heart with to make it stronger and healthier. Today is the day I may avoid a public event because I fear my soul will catch a deathly illness. Today is the day I may decide the mass hysteria of social media and information is no longer worth my invaluable time. Today can be the day I embrace the world with all my senses and small abilities. Today can be the day I wash my hands of negative thoughts, and reach out my hands to life and love.

 

I can not know if today will be the day I catch some disease, or go somewhere that is dangerous, or develop some symptom and will die because of it. But I can know that today is a day rife with opportunity. I can try to catch a glimpse of heaven on earth. I can develop more love in my heart and more love for others. I can go into the world creating something lasting, because everyone can create those things that will remain. There are things within the world that will remain, long after the Coronavirus is no more. We just need to believe in them.

 

And now these three things will remain forever and ever and ever:

Faith.

Hope.

Love.

But the greatest of these is Love.[1]

“yellow flower 3” by MishaGirl is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

 

Lest we forget, long before the word “corona” became synonymous with a scary virus, the word corona meant a part of a flower, and corona is one of the outermost and largest layers of the sun.  I get to decide for one more day if I will define myself by fear or if I will define myself by love. I get to decide if I will lemming-like join the mass hysteria of living against something, like a fast spreading cold or a flu or death, or if I will live for something, like a slow-spreading peace, joy, and kindness. I will decide whether to define myself as an eternally possible patient, or to define myself an eternally improbable saint. I will decide if I will be something that is dead inside because I fear what is outside, or if I will be someone alive and growing like a flower, or powerful, heat producing, and light-shedding like a sun.

 

I would rather live one more day as a flower. I would prefer to choose that when I, like a flower, return to the dust from which I was created, I will have sought to share a bit of beauty, spread a bit of joy and to mean something to some people that has made them feel loved.

 

And I will continue to believe and have a crazy kind of worldview that has faith in Some Life-Giving Force Out There. And I will struggle along in a sort of fear-inducing worship of That Life-Force with an equal amount of stuttering faith that there is Someone more powerful and light-giving, and healing, and loving, and eternal than any of the Suns in any of the Cosmoses. And I will hope beyond hope that no matter what bodily or soul-sucking evils we humans expose ourselves to, that Love is stronger and that Love will win. And I will try to live this day, as if no matter what any one of us does for good or ill here in our short time on this earth, no matter what —

Love, just like The Sun will remain forever.

“Sun” by Chris Yarzab is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

 

 

For there is a Sun and Shield; There is a Life-Force Who gives grace and glory; No good thing will be withheld from those who walk uprightly. (Psalm 84:11)

 

 

 

[1] I Corinthians 13:13