When it became clear that COVID-19 is spreading the world over, country by country shut down its borders and locked its people in their homes, promising that it would all be over in two months (remember that they still wanted to hold the Tokyo Olympics in July?). But now it’s clear: There is no relief in sight, as locust, hunger, and earthquakes are serving humanity blow after blow after blow.
Nature is a persistent teacher; it will not let up until we give up and agree to change. It didn’t send us these torments for no reason. We have been cultivating abusive behavior toward others and toward nature for generations. For several decades, we have been getting constant warnings that we had gone too far with the “Me, me, me” culture and that we must change. We would not listen. In the end, nature had to stop us and tell us “Stay home!”
But as soon as nature began to calm and show us its beauty, as soon as the air and the water began to clear, we reverted back to “normal.” It may have been “normal,” but it certainly wasn’t right.
So now nature has decided to step up its measures: It is sending us locust swarms of Biblical proportions, as some newspapers called them, hunger and thirst like we have never seen before, including in America, yet its demand has not changed at all: Start thinking of each other; say “We” before you say “Me,” and everything will be alright.
This “We” approach is the paradigm that runs all of nature; we cannot be excluded. The only reason we are suffering now is that we thought we could go our own separate way.
In the end, nature will teach us that if we want to feel good, we must first see that others feel good. This is nature’s only stipulation for turning our lives into Heaven on Earth. We can adopt this mindset and set off the emergence of happiness right now, or try a few more selfish ploys before we throw in the towel. We may not have freedom of choice, but we have all the freedom in the world to choose happiness.
[An employee takes the temperature of a building tenant outside the Empire State Building in midtown Manhattan, as the iconic tower prepares to open to more tenants and visitors following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in New York City, New York, U.S., June 24, 2020. Picture taken June 24, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Segar]