Imagine for a minute that everything just came to a stop. All of it. Suddenly there was no work. No money. No cars on the road. Air pollution plummeted. Schools were closed. No one had to go to the office.
Everything stopped.
We all know right now that we don't need to imagine this because we're all currently living a variation of the above...or all of it. Maybe you lost your job because of the pandemic. Maybe you were told to work from home indefinitely. Maybe you're in a sort of limbo where you don't know how much longer you're going to have a job. Maybe you own a business and it was made to shut down. Maybe you were furloughed.
The point is that right now the world has drastically changed.
What if we find out tomorrow that we need to social distance for another month? What if we're told next week that this is how life is going to be until at least July...maybe longer?
What if, when this ends, in two years we experience an environmental crisis? Do you think we're ready to handle something like that?
It's no secret that we treat the planet like our personal dumping ground. We don't seem to care about it very much. Scientists have been warning us for some tome now - much like the ones warning of a pandemic - that something cataclysmic is going to happen environmentally and we don't seem to care. In fact, some of us (literally) laugh at the warnings.
What's going to change when this ends? Are people going to willingly begin pumping filth and exhaust back into the air like we were before? Do people still need to get into their cars in the morning, jam up the highways, bridges, tunnels, and roads to go sit in an office? It would appear that this has been completely and totally unnecessary for quite a while.
So why start doing it again when this ends?
What makes us think that we're above it all? What made us think that something like we're experiencing right now wasn't going to happen to us? Why did we believe that a global pandemic was out of the scope of reality?
I think it's because we haven't been living in reality for some time now. In the last fifteen years we have all become somewhat clueless and/or ignorant to the world around us. We have chosen to believe that none of us are connected. We look at politicians and rich people as if they're above it all - and they look down at us and think the same thing.
We also came to believe that we are separate from the environment. We don't believe we're a part of it. We think we're above it. We dump and pump filth and waste into the air, water, and soil like we own the place. Well - we don't own it. No one owns it. We're actually just another part of it - but we chose to stop believing that.
A virus is a natural biological thing. Think about that for a minute. It's not manmade. COVID-19 came from the natural world around us, and has brought the manmade world - literally - to its knees. A microscopic thing that you can't see or touch has bankrupted companies. It has taken your job. It shut down schools, universities, bars, and restaurants. It has cancelled concert tours and conventions. It shut down New York City. It cancelled graduations and proms. It wiped out 401K's, and it crushed the stock market.
It stopped everything.
What will it change though? How are we going to be better when it ends? Are we going to stop dumping filth and and waste into the air, atmosphere, oceans, rivers, streams, and lakes? Are we going to stop burying chemicals in the soil? Are we going to treat the natural world around us with the respect it deserves?
I think that we need to because I think that right now at this precise moment Mother Nature is sending us a very clear message: I don't need you.
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