We are being called towards progress. Our own progress, individual and societal. Will we answer the call?
Will you?
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*sound of a train leaving a station*
The earth offers up her bounty to help us nourish ourselves. Not just today, but for generations to come. Progress — evolution — happens over generations. Industrialisation, digitisation, with every step, we come closer to understanding ourselves, our purpose for being here, to transcend the animal kingdom into a future existence that we can barely imagine.
Yet there are roadblocks all along the way. There are intoxications to get us stuck and stop right where we are. And nothing is more intoxicating than the possibility to fulfil our every sensual desire — I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it, I want it, I got it, I want it, I got it, I want it, I got it.
There’s something deeply poetic about a radical agent that stops the world in its tracks,
makes a real, serious dent in consumerism, tourism, and all the pollution that comes with it, and actually takes away your sense of smell and taste. It even seems to attack each person exactly where it hurts them the most — until we know more, I’m just going to take the poetic license to interpret this freely.
When I was young, I didn’t encounter too much death, luckily. Yet, whenever there was an accidental death around me, it struck me how everyone said things like “they were too young” and “they were the good ones”. My young mind found it easy to interpret a pattern: the good die young because their work here on earth is done. They have completed their tasks and they may ascend to heaven, and leave the constant craving pains of cellular life behind.
At a time of global awakening and transition, it seems so appropriate that different people experience this virus so differently. Some have a respiratory problem, others a digestive one, still others are just too exhausted to move. Perhaps the angels of god (or whoever is directing this particular season) have decided to poke some people with a stick, to wake up because time is running out, and they can’t afford to slow down the return of the king by not doing the work of self-realisation in time.
Corona. Crown. The return of the king. The saviour.
Or perhaps, just the crowning glory of a global awakening that finally allows us to collectively evolve our species into more than sensory stimulation addicts struggling to survive.
I don’t know who is directing this series but there is a grander plan here. Why else did the dinosaurs get wiped out, only to turn into fossil fuel to drive human progress?
The time has come, it’s do or die — the bounty of the earth has done its job of serving itself up to bring us here. Technology and development has been the boat on which we sailed out over the edge of the earth, past what we thought possible within a lifetime, let alone a generation. We don’t need to survive like animals anymore, we can transcend, we have freed up ourselves to be able to do more than survive.
We have the time to devote to our own transcendence.
We have the time to sit still and overcome all of our sensory longing. All of our pains have been laid out in front of us like a tragic buffet, and we’ve got to figure out how to get through them in our imposed solitude. We have the time to ask, what do these pains want to tell us? What do we need to acknowledge before we can move forward? What message is embedded in this particularly painful human experience of the body and mind, what do we need to reckon with — what is the rekening (dutch for ‘balance’) that we need to pay of before we can leave this place, and enter a world that is waiting for us, if only we’d prepare to enter it.
The pain is palpable. The deprivation brings up traumatic pasts. For one, it’s being restricted and contained; for another, it’s feeling helpless in changing the circumstances of one’s own personal torture; for yet another, it’s reliving the worst moments of being excluded from society altogether.
And the puzzlement is immense. Why, if we survived this in the past, does it hurt so much all over again? Why, if we evolved out of our childhoods to survive these traumas, do we feel so helpless and trapped all over again?
If not “we," then “me," in any case. Or do you know what I’m talking about?
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The only thing that keeps me going is the belief that humanity has the potential to go past the station of constant production and consumption.
The train has to leave the station. If you’re holding a ticket, it’s time for you to get on board.
Here’s your wakeup call.
And hey, don’t panic. Don’t be scared. This train will take you to new, beautiful pastures. All you have to do is get yourself together and get on.
*the sharp sound of the conductor’s whistle blowing, then the doors closing decisively*
Don’t stay on the platform. Get on board.
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