Do You See The Beast?
Hey, all.
Today I felt defeated, which isn't something I surrender to often. But I sat with that feeling today and it urged me to write this.
I know across the globe, and even within my neighborhood, everyone is having their unique experience with changes due to COVID-19. This is how I am experiencing it today.
I thought this was it, that defining moment for humanity.
One day, or maybe it was over several, I felt the world freeze. I felt how we were in a collective suspension of action. A pause. A breath.
At first, we saw a beast across the way, not sure how to best defend ourselves. There was a moment of panicked paralyzation. Do we run? Do we fight the beast? Should we lay down and play dead? Keep going on our way as if we didn't see it?
Before we noticed the beast, we had been running at a full sprint. The beast stopped us all at once, an unprecedented feat.
After our collective paralyzation, came grave acceptance. We must fight. We have only moments before the beast is upon us. The acceptance was defeating. The acceptance was painful. Sometimes, it was hopeful. The acceptance made the pause seem sublime in retrospect.
I thought we would see the beast for what it was. Not a killing machine, though it kills.
We were given the chance to stop our sprint. We were given the chance to see the beast was born out of sprinting for too long.
We had run far, so quickly that we forgot our legs could move at any other speed. And I feel so heart-shattered now. This one breath, this one pause, was the first we have taken in generations. Yet we jumped at the first chance to sprint again.
Yes, we can run away from this beast instead of fighting. For now. If this beast does not catch us we will meet another on our path, and another, and one more relentless and less forgiving even than this.
Stop your cowardly shaking from only looking at the beast's claws and teeth. Do not forget we will all die. It is how we live that counts here. Don't you recognize those eyes? Don't you feel that heart pounding from the beast's chest matching the elevated rate in yours? That breath short and quick? Don't you know that beast is you? Moving faster than we can fathom. Consuming more than we are prepared to process. Effecting everything that exists.
Of course, we haven't slowed down when our worth is married to our level of production. Of course, we don't stop when that allows us to consider that EVERYTHING we do in order to get ahead means leaving others behind. Stealing and destroying, then sprinting away before the dust settles on the blood-soaked Earth. How foolish of me to believe a puny virus could stop that kind of momentum.
If not this, what? If not the mass halt of global societies, what? If not tens of thousands dead, then what? If not the virulent proof that this way of life is absolutely unsustainable, then what will it take for us to slow down again? How will we ever remember that living doesn't mean pretending to chase death away?
Today I felt defeated, which isn't something I surrender to often. But I sat with that feeling today and it urged me to write this.
I know across the globe, and even within my neighborhood, everyone is having their unique experience with changes due to COVID-19. This is how I am experiencing it today.
---
One day, or maybe it was over several, I felt the world freeze. I felt how we were in a collective suspension of action. A pause. A breath.
At first, we saw a beast across the way, not sure how to best defend ourselves. There was a moment of panicked paralyzation. Do we run? Do we fight the beast? Should we lay down and play dead? Keep going on our way as if we didn't see it?
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| Photograph courtesy of Joe Sirard |
Before we noticed the beast, we had been running at a full sprint. The beast stopped us all at once, an unprecedented feat.
After our collective paralyzation, came grave acceptance. We must fight. We have only moments before the beast is upon us. The acceptance was defeating. The acceptance was painful. Sometimes, it was hopeful. The acceptance made the pause seem sublime in retrospect.
I thought we would see the beast for what it was. Not a killing machine, though it kills.
We were given the chance to stop our sprint. We were given the chance to see the beast was born out of sprinting for too long.
We had run far, so quickly that we forgot our legs could move at any other speed. And I feel so heart-shattered now. This one breath, this one pause, was the first we have taken in generations. Yet we jumped at the first chance to sprint again.
Yes, we can run away from this beast instead of fighting. For now. If this beast does not catch us we will meet another on our path, and another, and one more relentless and less forgiving even than this.
Stop your cowardly shaking from only looking at the beast's claws and teeth. Do not forget we will all die. It is how we live that counts here. Don't you recognize those eyes? Don't you feel that heart pounding from the beast's chest matching the elevated rate in yours? That breath short and quick? Don't you know that beast is you? Moving faster than we can fathom. Consuming more than we are prepared to process. Effecting everything that exists.
Of course, we haven't slowed down when our worth is married to our level of production. Of course, we don't stop when that allows us to consider that EVERYTHING we do in order to get ahead means leaving others behind. Stealing and destroying, then sprinting away before the dust settles on the blood-soaked Earth. How foolish of me to believe a puny virus could stop that kind of momentum.
If not this, what? If not the mass halt of global societies, what? If not tens of thousands dead, then what? If not the virulent proof that this way of life is absolutely unsustainable, then what will it take for us to slow down again? How will we ever remember that living doesn't mean pretending to chase death away?
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