It goes without saying that these are difficult times, and a lot of people are suffering.  It’s important to keep that in mind, and for each of us to do our best to help in whatever ways we can.  It’s also important to keep in mind that this interruption in business-as-usual offers possibilities for imagining a different, and perhaps ultimately better, future.  How might each of us contribute to that?

From futurist Matthias Horx, via Insight meditation teacher Jill Shepherd:

The world as we know it is dissolving. But behind it comes a new world, the formation of which we can at least imagine…

A massive loss of control suddenly turns into a veritable intoxication of the positive. After a period of bewilderment and fear, an inner strength arises. The world “ends”, but in the experience that we are still there, a kind of being new arises inside.

In the middle of civilization’s shutdown, we run through forests or parks, or across almost empty spaces. But this is not an apocalypse, but a new beginning.

This is how it turns out: Change begins as a changed pattern of expectations, perceptions and world connections. Sometimes it is precisely the break with the routines, the familiar, that releases our sense of the future again. The idea and certainty that everything could be completely different – and even better.