A Time Capsule: March 15th, 2020- The Week It All Changed

...A Monthly Practice Invitation

for Your Empowered, Heart-based Life...

A TIME CAPSULE

Hello my friends,

Fascinatingly, in preparing to write a post about what I've learned a month into this quarantine, I just found a draft of a blog post from Mar. 15th, the week it all went down...

I never finished it because at the time it felt like I didn't have the clarity of perspective to truly offer anything just yet.

Reading this preface from March 15th is like opening a time capsule. Here's how I prefaced my writing that day....

"March 15th, 2020--- A week ago, things seemed really different. From my viewpoint here in Los Angeles, the COVID-19 epidemic seemed like something waaaaay over there, off in a distant continent, with the few cases in the US seemingly containable.

I saw many posts on my social media from even-keeled (perhaps too even-keeled?) people, chastising others for being "dramatic" or "alarmist" when they warned that this was going to significantly disrupt our way of life in the United States.

So naive was I that a week ago I was planning a 700 person charity benefit (postponed), learning songs for 2 wedding gigs (postponed), and preparing for a weekend with friends in Palm Springs (cancelled.)

In the span of seven days, like walls closing in, the spaces that we were healthily encouraged to inhabit began to shrink and shrink, from the size of international festivals like SXSW, to mass gatherings like NBA games and Broadway shows, to small gatherings such as weddings, to now bars and restaurants. I am even seeing some suggest to not meet in person with others at all, even in a one-on-one setting.

I haven't seen this level of rapid disruption in my life time since 9/11. This feels like a similarly historic moment."

Wow. Now, in the scope of a month, it feels like a lot has happened, both in my external world and my internal world.

I was right to understand this as a historic moment. The U.S. is now almost entirely in lockdown, facing historic unemployment, with a projected economic depression ahead.

As of the time of this writing 35,394 have died from this disease in the US...

(I invite you to breath with me for a moment in acknowledgement and in contemplation of that number....in....out.....)

That's 35,000 families and communities traumatized, processing deep grief in this moment, whose lives will never be the same.

It seems clear to me now that none of us will ever be the same.

This moment is both historically tragic, and concurrently historically transformative.

Whether we invited it or not, whether we like it or not, radical transformation has begun within each of us, and amongst all of us.

And I'm beginning to understand, at least on an internal level, what the transformation is beginning to look like for me...

Over the next few weeks I'll be emailing you about the lessons I've learned.

Those titles include:

1. "Nothing Is Stable or Certain, Ever, And That's Okay"

2. "The Quarantine is a Mirror"

3. "The Machine Stopped and A Portal Opened"

4. "Living for The Process, Not the Product"

5. "There Is No Shared Reality Unless We Create One"

6. "We Are The Ones We've Been Waiting For"

7. "Everything Happens In Its Own Time, Right On Time"

Until then, I leave you with this video of seedlings to remind you that all growth is born through tension, movement, discomfort, courage and hope...