Well, well, look at where we are. Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, or like Dorothy being carried off to the land of Oz, we suddenly find ourselves in a world totally changed, unlike anything we have ever experienced.
Gone are the ways we normally act, the things we normally do, the expectations we normally have of what tomorrow will bring. We sit here, blinking, a little stunned, asking, “Where am I? What is this?”
The first week or two are taken up with necessities: What do I have to take care of? What supplies do I need to get? How can I find out what is cancelled or closed? And so forth. But then there comes a time when we can pause, and look around, and try to figure out where we have landed.
Where we have landed, like it or not, knowingly or not, is a place unexpected.
We have entered into a time of great transformation. A very few have predicted such a thing happening, but with no knowing of how it was to come about.
But, suddenly, here we are. The whole world has shifted. It is hard to know how to view such a place. Some might think of it as a zone in time we have entered, or an area of space the Earth has moved into, or a great cauldron of energy we are suddenly immersed in, or a massive group-consciousness event, or the planet having been pushed beyond her limits, or who knows what. But what we suddenly have at our fingertips is a time of shifting.
Just think, now we are in a unique place to decide, together, how we want to remake the world. It is like being in a cocoon, in a time of incubation, a time to change from one way of being in the world into a totally different way of being.
Here we are, each with our time to be alone, to contemplate, to think about what is really important in our lives, to think about how we would like our lives to be when “all this is over,” to look at just how we have been living, and how we would like to be living, and what is happening with the natural world with all our impacts upon it, and what we ought to do to become more responsible Earth-dwellers.
Just with the people I have spoken with in the last week or so, I keep hearing comments about how they suddenly have been pushed into simpler life, and they like it.
It is a chance to become more self-reliant, to become more nature-connected, to get away from the rat-race, to start to think like a homesteader, to look for ways we can take positive action to help each other, even if it is from a distance.
This is a great opportunity to turn our focus from the aspects of the situation, which are a calamity, and spend some of our energy and time working on the potential it holds for humanity. This is a great time to transform ourselves, our society, our world.
Each of us can choose some part to play, however large or small, in the great project of re-designing and re-building our lives and our world and our relationship to our planet. Dream big. What do you really want the world to be like? How can we help the planet recover? Where will your puzzle piece fit into the big picture? There is a lot you can do, even now when it has to be done through the mail or e-mail or phone calls. And you can plan for all the actions you can take later.
In the meantime, as we go through this process, we feel in limbo, neither here nor there, un-anchored. Everything we need to do seems more complicated, and harder to deal with. Let us try to remember that we are all going through this, that we are all uncertain and stressed. It is a time to practice calmness, to be mindful of how we are interacting with others (even after spending an hour and a half on hold on the phone) and try to treat each other with kindness and patience.
And whenever an opportunity arises, spread a little hope and plant a seed of the vision of what we can create on our island and in our world.
•••
Janai Kapua is a resident of Waimea.
I would beg to differ on “a very few have predicted such a thing happening, but with no knowing of how it was to come about.” There have been research groups around the world warning about this very thing for decades, and some governments have even been trying to prepare for it. There have been all sorts of special programming created about the efforts of such groups, and they all said the same thing–“It’s not a question of whether it will happen, but when.” There have even be very accurately depicted movies about such an event (please watch “Contagion” if you haven’t seen it). The only thing that was unknown about this is exactly how people would react to it. Many of us expected the United States government to be far more prepared than it has been and than it seems committed to being, and this is extremely troubling–a first world country with a THIRD WORLD response and result to a pandemic. It is shameful.
Now that we ARE experiencing what many people have actually been warning us about, perhaps we should start paying more attention to these people who have been warning us? There is another looming threat that people have been sounding the alarm about, and a large portion of the population seems to simply not care. These are the very same people who are complaining about social distancing and business closures and are trying to argue that everything needs to be put back the way it was in short order while the virus is still blowing through communities. Those people clearly aren’t learning anything from this, and it does not help matters when we DOWNPLAY the fact that people warned us about this kind of thing for a long time. PLEASE DON’T DO THIS. Tell the truth. It was quite well known that this was coming.
Thank you Janai. I will take these thoughtful words to heart today. Blessings revealed for each of us as we bear the shared burden of these turbulent times.
Nice piece of writing, Janai Kapua.
As we are landing in this new reality, as you so eloquently put it, I want to throw this out for consideration- that we will NOT be returning to normal. Normal as we’ve known it has jumped the shark, flown the coop, sailed off into the sunset; the patient is not recoverable, but this can be seen as a good thing.
We have this once in a lifetime opportunity to actually make things better from the ground up rather than try to make old stuff work again. If we are honest with ourselves we will admit that a world that doesn’t care for all its people equally is not a world that is worth recreating.
The virus is not the enemy, the real enemy is an ignorance of who and what we really are designed to be- stewards of and co-creators with nature, not dominators over nature.
The earth is a living being and she will always have the final word on everything. All it took from her was one pangolin, civet cat or bat in a wet market to bring the whole world to its knees, rich and poor alike.
“Go to your rooms and think about how you’ve been acting”, she says, but not with rancor, no, she says it with a tough love, kind of how a mother bear teaches her cubs with a swift cuffing. It gets their attention. We are not being punished, we are being guided towards our redemption.
Hopefully our attention will have been sufficiently mustered to meet the aftertimes with honor, respect and appreciation for the great gift of life that not just we humans have been given, but the life of all animals, plants, minerals, insects, and even the rocks and soil itself. It is by all of these forms interacting together that we humans have our life and if there is to be a flourishing future for us rather than a dystopian decline of unimaginable suffering as civilization continues to nosedive, it is imperative that we understand our place in the order of things.
Perhaps it was a mistake of humongous hubris to label ourselves Homo Sapiens Sapiens (meaning wise humans) as it seems we thought we were completed works but not realizing that we were but in larval form. And now as we enter the pupal stage of being in our cocoons we have the chance to emerge someday, sooner than later, with our angel wings unfurled but our success is not in any way a sure thing. We have to pass this test.
The question that each of us must ask is are we ready to the test? Are we ready to put quality of life for all people ahead of financial profit and insure that we don’t let governments and corporations get away with their chicanery any longer?
where are we now? Screwed by big brother. Wake UP. Go back to letting people do their thing. Forget the boogieman and practice safe sanitary aseptic technique and go live life.
Wouldn’t practicing safe and sanitary technique be staying at home and not going out and about?
please hire this person immediately to write for the garden island. What a talent. The first thing i have enjoyed reading in years in the garden island newspaper and certainly the best thing written about Covid 19 so far. You are wonderful i thoroughly enjoyed your letter, you are a brilliant writer! Local talent is being passed over all the time on this island, and you are a TALENT!
“Twilight Zone!”
Yes, Michael. And you’re very polite in not mentioning that the USA had better preparedness, we had better response capability until Mr Trump’s government dismantled those things.
You said: There is another looming threat…”. Which one?
Some people around here get very upset when I start speaking the truth about that thing you mentioned and it’s actions to make us less safe, so I chose to abstain.
This time.
The other looming threat is the same one that has been under discussion for the past two decades, but really became a household concept in 2006 when a certain someone who had been concerned about this issue for quite some time and actually studied under one of the people considered to be the first to raise the alarm on it put out a blockbuster movie on the topic. It’s the one people keep claiming scientists are in “disagreement” about when they actually aren’t. It’s the one people always respond to with “the Earth isn’t going anywhere.” It’s the one that has been presenting evidence of already being well underway for quite some time, but people refuse to believe it until its worst attributes are actually at their door trying to knock it down.
You know,…a time when it is far too late to do anything about it other than cry, huddle in our houses with our guns and stockpiles of ammo, toilet paper, and lord knows what else, and hope a few members of the human race can survive it.
Just like this current one, it is a force of nature that will show just how low we can be laid by it because too many of us refuse to take such stuff seriously.
There is a really amazing court document that outlines all of the epstein types that are being indicted. We are threatened everyday with out of control tourists and for sure transplants, politicians, EXlawyers, P.A., judges sellouts. Others have no clue about the special and amazing ancient history and artifacts that still can be found, especially if you knew where all the different sugar plantation camps or dump sites are located. Personally, I love this lockdown event, and yes, it finally gives the Kanaka Maoli the opportunity to recover the aina and return of Hawaiian Kingdom government noncorporate, their laws, and finally dismiss everything american that has mad this mess and war, for the last 127-years. How many generations that have been screwed blued and tattoo’d by americanization, fraudulent voting scams, nepotism, and so much more. We have our very own deep state moguls and they are as busted as those listed in the court document that is circulating worldwide, as well as the trafficker hui of babies, children and adults kidnapped or stolen throughout, and where these DUMBs are located around the globe. Epstein Mark of the beast has everything to do with Big Names that have been above the law for decades. FEMA prison barges will be collecting kauaians that have been marked, as well as, the other moku who have thousands collectively and retroactively, top to bottom. Some have been set up, but the karma of the others, like Zuckerberg is unbelievable.
Please- help- Garden Isle Health Care needs to find a way to allow family members to visit with their dying loved ones. It is so difficult for the patient and the family… Can they use some the Zuckerberg money to have a special room??
Shelly, can you say more about the situation you are referrng to? Does Garden Island need access to something that can allow bedside video visits between families and patients? Are you aware of a particular patient/family in need?