This Rona pandemic is a source of huge learning for one curious about living and dying.

How so many welcomed the lockdown. Welcomed the restrictions. Welcomed the security of shutting their front door and keeping the world out. Found reason after reason to keep it thus. Resented those who said it should be different.

How so many were driven to rule-breaking. Stupid rule-breaking. Rule-breaking that objectively gained them almost nothing but just had to be done. Perhaps a freedom necessary in living suddenly full of don’t, can’t, mustn’t, shouldn’t.

How some see conspiracy. A global co-ordinated and sequenced jigsaw arranged by forces nameless for purposes nameless but evidence to those who believe in ways I have no concept of ever understanding.

How many of us are living daily lives – have been for years – with many of the “new regulations” as part of their routine day after day after day. For whom this pandemic and all its health warnings is simply the rest of us joining their way of life and living.

How all of us are used to planning against stability and either adapted or didn’t.  How all of us made “advice” every more complex rules – or lived the dame as always – picking and choosing what works for them.  How social pressure to conform is as much science as the science of creating a vaccine.  How science has no fear of changing its mind – but politicians do.  How we are so diverse – even though we regard ourselves so the same. How we forget we are all journeying through each day – that we change each day – how we are never the same (no matter how much we claim we are and always have been)…. And how we live in the moment whilst thinking we never can, should or do.

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We are all more cork-like bobbing about on the currents of living than we ever like to admit we are.

I control – at best – six feet in front and six feet behind. By which I mean that I choose (or not) how I control how I react-respond to my interactions with the world in that tiny 36 square feet of space. I control what comes in and goes out. Whether I view it with suspicion, with fear, with respect, with kindness, with objectivity, with subjectivity, with consistency, or any combo of any of all of that.

I control me and nothing else.

I control whether I WANT the world to lockdown. Whether I NEED to rule-break for the hell of it. Whether I SEE conspiracy.  Whether I UNDERSTAND the restrictions and freedoms I CHOOSE daily because of my health, illness, wealth and poverty. I control how I RESPOND to you coming into my space. I get to CHOOSE what I do and think and feel.  But NOTHING else.

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Isn’t that absolutely amazing!

That despite everything around me, all the news bombarding, the social media echo chambers, the opinions and science, the money and spending pressures – despite EVERYTHING that I get to choose how I respond – that I control me (if I allow).

That I can be kind to me. I can be kind to you. I can be kind in the context of that which binds us all. That all of us have that same choice and same control. That we are all equal. We control ourselves and nothing else.

Politicians? Watch them scrabbling to keep up right now. Money? Even those with huge wealth succumb to Rona where Rona can. Belief? How many hotspots in those gathered together in the belief their belief was their immunity? Bravado? More hotspots and the birthing of “Long Covid”. Science? A fancy name for what we all do: watch and learn and ask questions without answers. Compassion? Something we think we are owed without realising we are all equal in that as well.  Kindness the same.  Love the same.  Life and living the same.

Already that equality has fragmented back to WAM, What About me. Something I never see in the world around us. The world we think we control. That owes us. That is ours for the plundering. That is way beyond our “six feet in front and behind” understanding or control.

And yet we still fight over God, over facemasks, over personal ownership for restraining this virus, over “right and wrong”, over beliefs that will never ever be proven in my lifetime.

I control me.

THAT is truly liberating!

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