Living in the corona virus pandemic, it seems that the motto of the days is no other than “stay home - stay safe”. I do understand, agree and follow all the proposed measures of staying safe (staying home, avoiding physical contact, washing hands, etc). It is just that the phrase “stay safe” is not enough in my poor understanding. It depicts the minimum of what needs to be done to survive the present moment. Survival is essential, I am not arguing with that. But survival is not real health or wellness. Survival does not equal a full life. Survival does not engender thriving-ness, growth, expansion, or flourishment of human and Earth.

If our lives are so important (and oh yes they are!) we need to go beyond safety and beyond survival. If our lives are so important, we need to forget about staying seated for 16 hours per day, watching continuously a screen, living in fear, consuming stress, feeding unhealthily, procrastinating the important, avoiding ourselves. Because our lives are so important, we need to roll up our sleeves and craft some real work.

The culture in which we have lived so far, mostly identifies human life with physical health. If we look at things solely from this perspective, I bet you wouldn’t guess what dangers are hiding inside our homes, right under our nose! WHO, the World Health Organization has a special name for these dangers. They call them Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). (!!!) The NCDs include heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and chronic lung disease. The rise of NCDs has been driven by primarily four major risk factors: tobacco use, physical inactivity, the harmful use of alcohol and unhealthy diets. NCDs kill 41 million people each year, equivalent to 71% of all deaths globally. (This information is about 2017 and is retrieved from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/noncommunicable-diseases) So, coming back to what I was saying about safety, protecting ourselves and surviving the corona virus right now, does not mean necessarily that we are surviving the NCDs. Because our lives are important, we need to do more than staying indoors.

The culture in which our ancestors lived involved a completely different understanding of human life, an understanding which endorsed a multiple dimensional of the human nature, including the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual dimension, all equally important and vital. This concept, although attributed mostly to the Native Americans, is imprinted in worldwide indigenous cultures and ancient philosophies, and traces of it are found even nowadays. In this perspective, because our lives are important we need to ask ourselves:    

• How am I empowering my physical dimension?    

• How can I listen more to my body? How am I following these invitations?    

• How do I bring tranquility, clarity and creativity in my mind?      

• How do I enhance my learning and above all self-learning, self-awareness?      

• How do I invite love and self-love to nest in my heart?      

• How can I fully embrace all of my emotions and what lesson is each one of them teaching me about me?

• How am I strengthening my connection with the spirit? How do I follow my soul?      

• What am I born to offer to this world through this life and how do I manifest it?

Because our lives are so important and because the world needs us, (our children need us, our grandchildren need us, our parents need us, our grandparents need us, the whole Earth needs us) let’s not just stay safe. Instead, let’s take the vastness of time we are unexpectedly given right now, to answer - not in words, but through our actions and presence- this one question that Mary Oliver is asking us in the poem below.

The Summer Day (by Mary Oliver)

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Eleni Michail