The Arc of Our Paths: Growing into Wholeness
Vishanthie Sewpaul, on https://www.amazon.com/Arc-Paths-Growing-Into-Wholeness/dp/B08WP9FMJ5
I find nothing more daunting, than the prospect of pulling from the depths of my being the highways and byways, and valleys of my life that I would rather leave unexamined. Yet, I had always engaged my students in writing and reflecting on their biographies, based on the Socratic belief that a life unexamined is a life not worth living, and my firm belief in the power of biography to unravel the complex personal, professional and political knots of our lives. Another deterrent to writing “my book” rests on a pragmatic question: where do I begin?…[among] the myriad moments that have left indelible footprints on my mind? The quagmire is simply too difficult to negotiate.
I begin in the present moment: March 2020. It is what I am living. Living the reality of Covid-19, feeling like I am treading a tightrope through a science fiction. Coronavirus is the thread that traverses the universe now, threadbare in some and stronger in other parts, both in magnitude and response. Like billions of people across the world, a short while ago I would never have thought that a virus would render life so very different from how we know and experience it, and one that might render a future in ways currently inconceivable.
Covid-19…has taken the world by storm, wreaking havoc, death and destruction….challenging the most advanced economic, social, political and health systems in the world. Many are questioning the meaning of all of this and what long-term implications Covid-19 might have. Would Covid-19 be the great equalizer that the world is so much in need of? Would it exacerbate existing inequalities and power imbalances? Is Covid-19 going to be the great liberator that frees humankind from the chains of its own greed? Would it induce a fundamental re-ordering of human values and help heal the world? Might it force us to acknowledge what we have always known, but choose to ignore – the profound inter-connectedness between the Self and the universe? Is this the harbinger of a global collective awakening of consciousness? A warning that if we, as human beings, refuse to take care of the whole of nature, nature will find ways of taking care of itself?
There are some who are claiming that the lockdowns across the world are already seeing a cleaner, greener and less polluted world….In a Facebook posting one person wrote: “What we are seeing in the span of a couple of days is amazing.” So why then is the world not screaming: “Hurrah thank you Coronavirus, great job, you’re here to stay!” Is it not uncanny how in the face this global…inexplicable crisis, we attribute to a virus animate properties, and personify it as “liberator” or “oppressor”? Clearly it is the nature of the virus to create death and destruction, but its liberating and/or oppressive potential rests on how we, as humankind, choose to respond to it…..human beings have the power to liberate or to enslave, not the virus.
