Tonight there is song. Empty streets are filled with love; we sing alone and we sing together.

Across chasms and borders and boundaries, across ideologies and races, across class there is song. 

The rain washes us clean.

There is a rest like I have never seen or even imagined.

While fear remains, it has also guided us back to each other, back to ourselves.

This is an Ode to hardship, with gratitude for struggle and doubt

I’m so in love with uncertain times because what will remain certain is love, is our Humanity even if we lost it for a while, it found us again

 

Song reaches me from my balcony, breaking an eerie calm as the city settles into a 20-day quarantine. Two and a half million people indoors for the duration. I heard the doors close, as if all at once, as the sunset and a strange empty World met my gaze.

And, as the rain began to fall, a song began to rise from homes across the valley, a chorus of gratitude and love for one another  

I began to hear it from even further off 

 

From across the world as the sun set, 

in the old world, on a sacred night, prayer and song intermingle in a global call and response. 

We are singing together United by our isolation, 

bonded by our love for one another and with the fresh perspective of how special this all is. 

 

Never did I imagine I’d be writing a love letter to a global pandemic, but I write to the bond that we have uncovered, the priorities we misplaced, the time we took for granted 

 

We are so fortunate to be alive

We are so fortunate to be alive today!

 

Even in this precious age of uncertainty, 

Fear and loss can bring us together. 

Love, like the song, rises from the streets

 

Turn to friends 

Turn to music 

Turn to glance in the mirror 

and celebrate this moment for its gifts 

and its struggle. 

For the opportunity and it’s hardship 

they are inextricably linked.

 

Your fear is valid 

but so is your love. 

Sing the song of love and pray with your whole soul. 

This time is an invitation back to ourselves. 

For that I am grateful, or that I rejoice!

 

Has there not been enough of the right kind of hardship 

the divisive struggles before?

 

But now we are really All in This Together, 

stranded or sequestered together 

bonded in ways humans on the planet have never been. 

linked by common collective global experience, 

yet fortunate enough to reach across the world through the Web 

we are closer than ever before 

 

Able to slow down — invited to slow down 

forced to slow down. 

— because we needed it 

to re-evaluate our priorities 

—because we needed to 

to reconnect with one another and ourselves

—because we were lost 

 

Let the Earth take a breath. 

Take a breath yourself and reconnect.

We all need it. 

 

Author’s Note:

My new book, “How Change Really Happens: Unexpected Tools of Transformation” (available through Amazon: Kindle/ Audible) re-examines our understanding of both external and internal change. It teaches how we can cultivate an internal bond to fortify ourselves for difficult times and circumstances, such as those we face today. It was written to support individuals and communities through change and transformation.

 

Photo Credit: Annie Quick