I absolutely agree with everything you talk about here Eric!
Perhaps it was that awful period of lockdown that stopped us in our tracks and gave us time to mull things over?
Good and bad came out of that as I was one of those who were reluctant to go anywhere once lockdown restrictions ended, but how freeing when I did get out and about!
The squaller and the slow imploding of basic services in our metro made me want to run away at times, or just stay within our property. But slowly, we as citizens are taking on smaller projects meant to be done by the local authority who have defrauded the property ratepayers in a big way! We're all banding together to ensure our safety with rampant crime.
However, I do some of the things you recommend, and one thing we've been trying to do quite a bit is to become tourists in our own city and province. At least those places are still being maintained and preserved and are an absolute delight, reminding us why we love our country so much. Just the city's main beaches which were Durban's main tourist attraction are grossly neglected.
I simply HAVE to get back to meditation - stopped when Mom was ill for so long as she needed constant care.
A free gift that I have been denying myself, despite knowing the fantastic benefits, both mentally and physically. I have your books, and it's time I took them off the bookshelf again.
Thank you for sharing your wonderful insight here!
It's time you got us busy again with your #blockchainmemoryproject, or challenge us with topic suggestions.
Or am I being presumptious here ;)
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Thanks Lizelle! It's always good to hear from you. What I'm starting to realize about the pandemic is it inflicted a lot of deep financial, emotional, and psychological trauma on people. I think the behaviors we experienced after the lock-downs were lifted was the effects of that trauma resurfacing. I'm starting to see some people in our lives venturing out and becoming more like the people they were before all this. I know from particularly stressful events in my life that we're in a kind of survival mode during the stressful times and then the trauma surfaces after the stressor is gone. I had a corporate job that nearly broke me down during 2011-2013 and it took close to a year to fully recover from that. The pandemic was way worse than that for many people.
It sounds like you and your community are healing nicely! I'm glad to hear that. Sometimes the only option left is for the community to come together and solve things themselves. Things in our area are still quite bad. There's a lot of apathy. Many people around us still have hope that the police, politicians, and social programs will save them. They keep electing the same crooked politicians hoping "it will be different". We need block watches for crime and citizens that are willing to ban together to rebuild the fabric of the neighborhoods.
I really hope you can establish a routine of mediation again! I was trying the app Headspace for a while but it got old after a few months. I just fell back into my usual routine and have a new appreciation for it.
Thank you for reading this! Yes, I'll have to revive the memory project again! That would be a fun thing to do this summer. Take care!