What has Covid-19 taught us?

Well, there’s the obvious answer. As the skies cleared and the animals came back, as crime decreased and care escalated, the planet healed.

We also got a very dark look at how we have been living and realized acutely how it does not serve us. 

During Covid-19 we had enough time on our hands to stop and think. We saw that:

We lived in a world of high poverty, even though we had abundant riches.We believed that happiness came from eating junk, smoking pot, or drinking wine, yet joy was nowhere to be found.

We experienced profound loneliness amid a global population explosion.

We chose to build wealthy corporations over a pristine environment and a healthy planet.

We traded cars and planes for walking and playing, and we got fat.We sat at a desk for 8 hours a day until our bodies became filled with inflammation and illness.

We threw our waste into our water, and our lands like it were of no consequence. Trees and animals died. People died.We believed friends and family were found in a phone.  

We bought into the idea that ‘instant’ was better than anything else.We fished the world’s waters until no fish swam.

We forgot that music is better than drama, and real conversations were better than fake news.

We focused on temper tantrums and media sensationalism over authentic and robust leadership.

We cared more about technology than we did about our children and our animals.We paid attention to the dark side and snubbed our noses at words like proactive health and self-awareness.

We used government money to pay for sickness rather than health. As a result, we perpetuated more heart problems, addiction, depression, and anxiety and taxed ourselves into further debt.

We honored our ‘feelings’ even when they led us to our own demise.We blamed everyone but ourselves rather than taking collective responsibility.

We overspent to the point that debt became the new normal even though it cost us our sanity.

We threw our coffee cups out the window and polluted our very own streets.We forgot that our elders were our greatest teachers of wisdom and the way.We kept busy and busier to the point that staying still and observing became a lost power.

We honored money over caring, greed, over-contribution, and overindulging over freedom.

WE HAVE PAID THE PRICE FOR OUR LACK OF CARE

We paid the price for all of this. But we didn’t really see it clearly until the entire world stopped during the Corona Virus Pandemic. In essence, Covid-19 has been a gift to the more than seven billion people who call this planet home. 

After the virus is over, will we look away, or will we recreate our world with collective intelligence and the big picture in mind? These are the questions of our time.

We have an opportunity to build on our strengths. We already have a deep caring toward others. We are already rich in character music and fun. We already have a resource-rich world. We already have vast lands and incredible scenery.We already have smart, creative, and innovative people. We are already rich in diversity and inclusion. 

So if that’s all true, how did we get into such a mess? And most importantly, how do we fix it?

The only thing we know for sure is that we can’t go backward. We can’t try to recreate the old with a few new options. We can’t pretend not-to-see what we now have come to realize. 

So…. the only thing to do is build an entirely new future. Build a brand new future. Now, doesn’t that sound kind of scary but really exciting to you?  

Right in front of us is the possibility of creating whatever we want for ourselves and our lives here in this world.  It will take a culture of collective and authenticity responsibility. It will take unity.

Nice words, but what does that mean and what does that really look like?
The truthful answer is, we don’t know. 

Some of us like to presume we know. Some take a stab at it. The reality is, we have failed miserably to act in the best interest of the world. We are in debt, addicted to negative news, we are in ill-health, and we are depressed.

Every single one of us needs to put our thoughts together and put them into a collective pot of sustainable solutions. Every single one of us needs to think with the big picture in mind, or we are doomed to fail once again.
What would it take for every single one of us, to offer ideas and solutions toward a sustainable future?  I mean really….what would it take?  That’s our starting point.

• What would it mean to have our media turned drama content into solution news?
• What would it mean to design an ideas App so everyone could have a say in the designing of our future?
• What would it mean to have “future” hack-a-thons, think tanks, and brainstorming sessions to find ways that ensure we never repeat the mistakes of the past?
• What would it mean to get the ideas of the elders and bring wisdom and insight into the equation?
• What would it mean to embrace fearless children as the teachers of our tomorrow?
• What would it mean for us to revamp education so that people learned what they truly wanted to contribute to the world?
• What would it mean to create cultures of support and inclusion so that outcomes like homelessness and hunger we abolished?
• What would it mean to create a culture without crime as we saw emerging during Covid-19?
• What would it mean to put the planet and animals first and all other things second?

Do you think it’s time we created a global forum of intelligence with the big picture at the forefront of all priorities?

Covid-19 made the world stop. 

A startup does not mean the virus is over. It means the possibility of a sustainable world has just begun.