Let the Walls Crumble

As I was talking and processing through this crazy time with my friend the other day, she said something that really got me thinking; she said that she felt like she was going through the stages of grief. I felt like this was such a great explanation for what we are all going through. Many of us are grieving the loss of our everyday routine, our freedom to come and go as we please, visiting with friends and family, money through productive work, and a hold on our dreams or aspirations. As we enter into the grief process, it is important to remember that everybody experiences grief at a different stage, sequence, and timing. If you are anything like me, the grief process may not have even started yet.

Through meditation, I am finding that I have put up a wall between me and Covid-19. A wall that is constructed of thick brick and mortar which is tightly packed and firm. I am not naïve to what is going on, but I am also not processing the chaos, the fear, the facts. I am choosing to resist it, much like I resist many other inevitable changes that I may not like.

As Buddha once said “You only lose what you cling to.” By holding on so tight to the life that we had prior to the pandemic, we are continuing to fight the battle over and over again by resisting what has become of our routines and worlds. By fighting, we are prolonging the pain, the anxiety and the mental battle going on within ourselves. By not allowing ourselves to enter into the stages of grief, accepting what ‘is,’ we are further postponing the inevitable. We are allowing our hands to tighten around the rope and the rope to tighten back around our hands, causing them to redden and bleed as we desperately cling to what was. It is only when we stop resisting what has come that we can begin to experience and grieve what is lost and build something new and better in its place.

Today your challenge is to sit quietly with yourself and think about the ways in which you have accepted or fought and resisted the changes that have taken place in your life. Are you in denial, sad, angry, acceptance or have you yet to start the process, standing with your armor behind your brick wall, fighting any news that comes your way. If you are anything like me and still standing in that armor, ready for a fight, take a minute to look behind you. What has already slipped in and changed without you knowing? Is it time to accept the change, take off the armor and return back to your world, the world that you see behind you as it is now?