How to survive the suffocating forest fire of fear.

How to survive the suffocating forest fire of fear.

I drove through a section of California land yesterday that had been, seemingly, decimated by fire. Trees were ashen skeletons of what they were—gnarled and crumbling. Brush, shrubbery was scorched—the very land beneath blackened in the wake of the fire’s fury—like a permanent shadow in which the wounded earth could take cover until healed enough to move once more.

It struck me how brilliantly nature had illustrated the current state of our cities, our nation, our world. 

Through every text alert, email proviso, news flash, we have been told to duck and cover; to find a safe and isolated bunker in which to hole up as this particular pandemic gathers momentum. Much like the ghostly California land through which I had recently trodden, our people, our public interaction has been compelled to pause. 

As the forest fire of fear has swept over our world, it has offered no better reminder that now is the time for hibernation. Deep beneath the scorched earth of our tragic contagion, it is time to honor the burial of what was in the past, and plant the seeds of our dreams to come. It is time to pause, be still, water the undergrowth of our deepest desires. It is time to let them gestate, gather nutrients from the abundant layers of fertile soil below the surface, and multiply the cellular miracle manifestation of hope until the baptism of underbrush sprouts from each dream that’s born, anew.

We have this opportunity to stop. To take a moment. To connect with how we feel, and, more importantly, how we WANT to feel. We have this beautiful, unique opportunity to dream; to actually implement Einstein’s inspired hypothesis, that “imagination is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” We have an unheard of, governmentally enforced maternity and paternity leave in which each of us can nurture, nourish the newborn, infantile creativity of our dreams. 

As the winds of rumor and panic fuel the  ferocious force we have been witnessing, try to keep focused on the gift of unfettered free time. It’s time to pull the focus onto what we really want...not what we don’t. 

We are consummate dreamers. We cannot help but contribute to and create the world around us. So, in the spirit of life’s coming attractions, happy and MINDFUL imagination to us all...