Change Has Come

Happy Monday!

I have been dreading to write that line all week at the risk of sounding insensitive.

Yet, here I am declaring it. Just because...we find what we seek. Though it is easier to wallow in uncertainties, we can be the better person who labor to climb up the ditch and seek to "make sense" of all that is happening around.

Sense-making is one requirement of resilience. It is inherent in sense-making though, that we recognize that not everything will make sense now, but it will in the future.

Meanwhile, what do we do?

1. Be present in the experience. Be aware of your thought processes, your feelings, your decisions. From what feeling (fear, hope, anger, love) are you operating on? How are your decisions affecting you and the people around you?

Every experience teaches us a lesson. Pay attention or you'd have to learn it again.

2. Define who you are in the situation. We may not have control over the situation, but if we are aware, we know that our response to it defines us as a person. A person who is aware is on his feet defining, at every turn, the type of person he wants to emerge as at the end of this all.

3. Create a story. We are always composing a story in our heads. That is why we plan, we anticipate, we hope or dread. How would the post Covid world be like? What stories will you tell? What challenges would you have survived? What personal changes would have taken place inside and around you? Who are the people you stand by with?

The events that are unfolding before us are unprecedented and is one for the books. We are inevitably part of it no matter how we try to escape. We may play different parts to the story but we are in the story, in the history, in the unfolding.

Minsan lang to. How we deal with it would make the stories we will tell the next generation.

Yes, we have limited mobility and are encouraged to have limited physical contact with others at this time. However, our resourcefulness in providing service in our businesses or with our colleagues, kindness in checking up on people, our looking out to what information or help we can extend within our means, our productive use of our time while indoors, the quality of family life we foster while you are forced to stay at home, our responding not as closed up fearful men but ready partners to those who need our support, all these go a long way. Even our staying out of harms way is already a big help to our family members who will be left miserable if something happens to us.

Little thoughtful actions are better than none at all.

Sense-making post script:

After all these, I hope we (survive) find that the reason this happened is so...

▪️That countries will review and improve on their epidemic/pandemic response and capabilities.

▪️That governments zero in on environmental causes that facilitated this virus and take the environment more seriously.

▪️That nations realize how ignoring the needs of other nations will eventually lead to them battling the same problem on their very shores. We are all connected.

▪️That people realize how their source of information can help or aggrevate the situation.

▪️That people realize how little they need and move forward working more on what proved essential in critical times: family, communication, trusting relationships, frugality, contentment and resilience.

▪️That people hug more, touch more, travel more, dare more, meet up and connect more - because we can.

▪️That people appreciate their faith more, the consolation, the providence, account for the little miracles and assistance we receive everday.

There is more, more personal I am sure, that will arise in the coming days, weeks, months. I hope in the end, we all emerge with better nations, better policies, better people, better us.

Be safe everyone!