Are We Facing The Greatest Moral Challenge Of Our Times?

All we did was complain.

Not so long ago we wished we could get a chance to experience a slower world. A world where we could get rid of the sense of rush and constant state of resistance. A world where we can feel whole. Ever noticed how rushing implies a feeling of emptiness?

Life was speeding up, bringing our inner anguish with it. We wanted so bad to be efficient, productive, and just jam in as much as we possibly could, but have we ever took a moment to consider the cost of it?

Looking back on the last couple of months I’ve noticed how absent I was and how I missed out on things that were supposed to have all the attention in the world. Instead, I was just focusing on the things that needed to be done. Constantly racing against the clock. It almost felt like I’m pushing a brick against time to block it and to make it steady. Everything was exhausting, frustrating, and sucking on my energy. At the end of the day, the feeling that hit me could very well be associated with a candle that has been snuffed out.

Although there is nothing wrong with rushing, when we rush, we’re not really home. We’re not really safe. We can’t be present and still be racing like a mad man. The two things are seemingly self-contradictory and paradoxical.

Without a doubt, I think most of us feel that we are in a limited period of time, so we rush to fill every minute of every day, live our lives to the fullest, and then ultimately drain. From the moment our feet touch the floor in the morning, we rush until nighttime when we fall into bed, and then we do it all over again for the next five days. For the next years.

This leads me to create a time-lapse of our lives, from the moment we were kids to where we are now. I remember when I was younger all I ever wished for was to be old enough to drive, to have a job, to make my own money, and to not have to ask for permission every time I wanted to do something which would crack the routine.

As the years went by, I haven’t quite slowed down. And not because I did not want to take a break, or to look at the world from another perspective, but because that world would not give me the chance to do so. It’s easy to get sucked in a loop, and want to know why? We get a rush from rushing. It’s habitual, unconscious, and can be addictive.

We don’t want to feel our real emotions or tackle our problems. Constant motion is a diversion to deeper, underlying feelings that cause pain and discomfort to us. So, in order to escape those thoughts and emotions, we fill our days with all the wrong things. We feel like if we slow down we’re going get run down and everyone is going to move ahead of us.

And no matter how many times we think we’re going to slow down and take some time for friends and family and fun, we’re fine for a long weekend or maybe a holiday. And then we head back on the speeding train.

All we did was complain, but now we complain even more than before.

“If anything the pandemic should make us realize that humanity is NOT the most powerful thing on this planet and that we should rethink our relationship with planet Earth.”

If there’s anything I would add to this quote is that we should rethink and revalue our relationship with ourselves and with the people who surround us as well. And this is Crucial, with a capital C.

Time is now at a standstill. Tuesdays are like Thursdays. Saturdays are like Mondays. Even if we are not in official isolation, there is nothing to do, nobody to visit, nothing to plan, nothing to look forward to. Except if we dig deeper within ourselves.

Who would have thought that something invisible to the human eye would have stopped people all around the world? It entered our lives, our friendships, our identities, it took away our hugs, our greetings, and it made us stiff, closed, and silent. And this silence is surreal because no one knows exactly what is going to happen next.

How Do You Deal With Something You Haven’t Dealt Before?

I’ve recently come across a blog post that was posted on timesofisrael.com, and I remembered a few words from the Israeli philosopher and writer, Moshe Halbertal.

According to him, assuming that these kinds of occurrences like the virus SARS-CoV-2 and the Spanish flu from 1918 have an inner logic of evolution as if nature itself had its own rational moral logic — is both empirically false and morally abominable.

Rather, what we see is our deep fragility as a species. We are experiencing our complete vulnerability. There is no inherent rationale for this. But there is an inherent message: we are horribly vulnerable. There is this biological euphoria, that somehow we have conquered, through technology and through our capabilities, what has devastated humanity in the past. This is where we’ve been proven to be entirely wrong.

The source of our fragility in some ways — and this is the paradox of all — is the result of the sources of our presumed strength, because, among other things, the spread of this virus is a function of our advancement as a species, of our power, of our global power.

So, here we are, standing still, waiting for it to pass.

In this scenario, the pandemic brings to light all elements of neglect. Neglect of the health care system, neglect of the social infrastructure. It leads to searching and finding an answer to the question: Where did we miscalculate everything? Where did we go wrong? And how can we fix it?

Truth be told, we can never fully fix it, and that in all skepticism could be our savior.

There is nothing in this world that happens for no reason. Everything is closely linked to our past structures and behaviors. I mean, such massive devastation is not just a simple accident. It is tied closely to our previous way of behaving in the world.

As a result of that mindless behavior, the world stopped engulfing humanity as a whole now. We can not say that it is merely on the governmental system of countries or on the politicians or people with higher authority, because it would be false and untrue. Rather this is on all of us — ordinary and not ordinary people of the world. We all contributed to some extent to our current situation and just like that, the solution has now fallen into our hands.

We might not be able to get back to that “normality” we had before, but that is okay. It wasn’t such a pleasant state of being after all. However, we can adjust to the newly imposed circumstances and we can stop thinking that tomorrow will be exactly like today. There is a lack of alertness that is so costly in life and other things.

Stay awake and conscious — show collective responsibility.