05/04/2020
THE LOCKDOWN PONDER
While sweeping up the sand and leaves for the thousandth time in the last 10 days of lockdown and battling the elements, I started to ponder….
The wind doesn’t care about my carefully swept pile of sand and leaves, it doesn’t have an agenda. It has no judgement so it doesn’t care who I am, where I live, what I feel about it blowing my hard work around and it certainly cares less about the names that I call it! It’s just doing what it’s meant to do….BLOW!
This train of thought set me on another course to ponder….
What the lesson for me in this lockdown is. I mean I’m stuck in a very full, busy household with three boys (one of which is my nephew), three adults (one being my mother-in-law), two puppies and three cats, and not to mention the imminent digi-school starting! Enough to set anyone’s nerves on edge.
Surely there is a lesson in there that I’m missing!
And that’s when it struck me (accompanied by yet another crushing blow from my old friend the wind)…
Why are we as humans always SEARCHING (ie: doing / looking for / analysing) for something, some answer, sign or reason for things that happen or are happening, situations we are in, the hand that we’ve been dealt? The “WHY ME” syndrome.
My next realisation was thanks to the hours of Tai Chi training I have done because in that moment I realised that Tai Chi teaches one to OBSERVE. Observation without judgment (internal, external and as a whole).
So….why are we trying so hard to engage with this virus? We are asking so many questions, “where is it from, how did it happen, how do we kill it etc?” We are creating too much brain activity, attaching too many strong emotions to it. Why are we judging this virus? Is it evil or is it just doing what viruses do like the wind?
We are becoming obsessed with everything around this situation of the virus and lockdown that all it is doing is leading to MORE STRESS!!
We have all been forced into lockdown so now is the time to OBSERVE. Observe nature, observe ourselves.
The ancients sat and observed nature, how it moved, how it transformed. They understood these movements and therefore followed them with ease and without question, choosing to live with and in nature rather than against it or separate from it.
Nature doesn’t try to change or be anything that it isn’t, so why do we? This behavior of ours only leads us further away from nature.
How are we to understand or know this virus if we fail to understand and know ourselves?
Therefore….take this time in lockdown that you have been given to find and know yourself by OBSERVING in STILLNESS and in PEACE and in relation to nature, not separate from nature.
So when next you are sweeping up your courtyard….either wait for a not-so-windy day (which is practically impossible in Cape Town) or learn to work with the wind and time your sweeps so that the wind can carry the sand back to where it came from…
