As we come to the realization that we will not be going back to the way things used to be, before the Corona virus became a global pandemic, we come to find ourselves in that between space. We have memories of how it used to be. And we now know that the future will be definitively different. Now what?
The one life experience that first comes to mind for me was being diagnosed with melanoma in 2001. It was the first time I heard the cancer word associated with me. My first thoughts were about survival. What do I need to do to get through this? I will always be grateful to the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica for their cutting – edge diagnostic abilities and treatment protocols. I survived.
However, as a young man who primarily grew up in southern California, I needed to redefine my relationship with the sun. Survival is great and thriving is even better, whether it be cancer or a pandemic. I had to consciously reimagine my relationship with the sun differently. I continued to live in Orange County and the sun continued to shine. Now what? I had to reimagine our future together.
I think we find ourselves, individually and collectively, in a similar situation. We have a new virus in the world that demands that we do things differently. We desire to survive and thrive and the virus, doing what viruses do, chooses the same. Now what?
We will have to reimagine our lives differently together. I need not list all the areas of our lives that have been impacted – it seems endless. A global pandemic has had global impact on our individual and collective lives. And I believe that even though both of us are resilient, as the human community we have the advantage of not being new to pandemics. We have survived before and we have thrived after.
Now what? I invite you to reimagine our future, individually and collectively, together. We are collectively more creative, and hope filled together. Let us bring our best to co-creating a future well beyond surviving. Re-imagine thriving.
“Re-imagination invites us to co-create, with love and hope, a new now.”
~ Kevin Buck