Smiling from Behind my Mask

Confessions of an Introvert Smiling from Behind my Mask

“Never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." -Rahm Emanuel

Of course I fear and feel for the vulnerable ones, and appreciate the heroes fighting the the virus on the front lines to protect us all. And while my communal household is isolating and hunkering down, I too look forward to the reopening of the outside world.

Still, I have to admit, this is an introvert’s dream. And other than the above mentioned stipulations, I’m lovin’ it.

When I was a child, the grown ups bought me a huge sweatshirt emblazoned with a quote from the comic strip Peanuts, “ I love mankind; it’s people I can’t stand!” I can relate to that. Those guys really got me. I loved to pull my arms and legs into the giant sweatshirt and have my own little tent space.

Fortunately I can still do my daily roam on the hiking trails all around where I live in the rainforest. But it has always bothered me to walk through people’s toxic body products cloud when I passed them on the trail. My delicate veganish sense of smell gives me nasal superpowers. I smell every cologne, antiperspirant chemical, hairspray and whatnot that goes by me. I often even know what people have eaten as well! But the new trail etiquette is to actually leave the trail, and let the person pass. Hey, works for me.

I love the quiet now. Fewer cars going by, fewer airplanes roaring overhead. Just birds! All over the world, during this incredible global timeout, city people are hearing the birds, and pollution levels are plummeting! I hope everyone is using their time out to reconsider how we do business as usual. How many car trips are really justifiable? How many jobs really require the burning of fossil fuels to get into the office, and how much of this can be done from home? 

And we have become way too casual about flying. I get that it is a blessing to be able to hop on a plane and quickly get to the bedside of that dying relative, or for the wildfire crew that needs to quickly assemble in another state. But the word blessing also means to pierce, or tear open. The fact is, the technology of flying on the planet at this time is shredding the environment. It is crude, primitive, dangerous, dirty, wasteful of natural resources, toxic to all concerned in every way, and at least ninety percent unnecessary. It is rude to all of us who have to put up with the roar above us, it contributes in a substantial way to the current extinction crisis on Earth, and it encourages our most selfish and impatient impulses. I hope the airline industry crashes. And may we all rest in peace!

And we certainly do not need swarms of drones, droning out the birds and invading our privacy from above, to deliver pizza.

There are those, (not us introverts,) who will of course say that we need to physically go into the workplace or school in order to socialize. But we can do this at the time and place of our own individual choosing! Must we sit in rows, military style, as our lessons are administered to us? Let’s throw out the factory model of education. It is quite obsolete.

I note that despite this moment of unprecedented heavy use, the internet is still functional. We do not need to add more electromagnetic pollution to our atmosphere with five G. Underground fiber is way quieter and cleaner.

I also note the abundance that allows us all to still eat and heat in a time when the economy is in a so called sudden depression. Where do you think all of the gains of civilization have been going all these years? I mean by that our wealth of shared information, our infrastructure, our myriad ways of doing more with less, our wealth inherited from the work of those who came before us. We have a whole lot of slack and abundance, and we work too many hours, but why?! 

Our money system, which lets the rich roll all the planets’ labor and natural resources into tiny paper or electronic balls for their own super powers, is the way it is, only because we allow it. We allow it only because we have bought into the propaganda that tells us that there is not enough for everyone so we must fight each other. It is a toxic and misguided meme of infinite economic growth, the philosophy of a cancer cell.

We have way too many people working at jobs that are unneeded, unhealthy, unhelpful, or just plain toxic and dangerous for all life on the planet. Let’s get serious about the universal basic income, so people can get creative, or think deeply about solving the real problems of the world instead of just scraping by, or just take a healthy and much needed rest!

I hope we learn from this crisis. I hope we learn ways to keep calm, because muddled thinking results from stress and fear. 

One thing is for sure, this is a turning point, a crisis offering opportunity, and the world will never be the same again.

“Crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think." -Jawaharlal Nehru