All right. It's May 15th, we are somewhere in the Corona pandemic. How do you experience the situation at the moment?
Interesting timing. Last night someone said on a call that we have been in lockdown for two months. These two months went past just like a wave. It is just sort of gone into this like cloudy, squishy, like nothingness.
But of course I know that I've been doing things, but being reminded was quite sobering, actually. I kind of like reflecting how would I have done or how would I have been if I had two months outside of lock down. These days somehow blended into one. It was difficult to kind of mark what's happened in the last two months.
And where I am is in rural Somerset. So there are quite some little birds tweeting, and I'm in a village where people are elderly. I am by far the youngest, I dropped the average age quite significantly. And we're on the edge of this village. And it's been really... We moved in just before lookdown happened. So it's been a really beautiful way or unexpected way of entering into a new community.
And the only way that I have witnessed and observed this space in this community is through the lens of lockdown and a lot of walkers and lots of WhatsApp groups and care and attention being given. I do not know if that goes on outside of lockdown, but I've really seen the beauty in the humanity here. And that's made me feel very welcome. It's really, really touching.
Thank you. If you look at these two months or two and a half months. Is there anything you learned about yourself or the context or even or the society you're living in? Anything you observed that somehow speaks to you?
I haven't had a huge amount of learning about myself, because I'm often working from home and I've chosen to live in a rural area, so I'm semi isolating anyway in a voluntary way. But there's something about this in terms of society that I'm interested in. And it's kind of following on from a previous inquiry into different experiences.
I find it quite difficult to fathom how my experience of Covid-19 compares to so many other people. And yet we're all in this together, as we're being told. What I experience is with housemates, who have lost their work, they're very well in being asked to, in being forced to slow down. And they're busy, they're making things. But there's people who are really going through grief and severe loss and are having such a different experience of this.
And then there are people who are not feeling safe in their communities because they're not being given protection. They do not have the space like I do.
There is this kind of... the underbelly – in the U.K. – of our society and our class system and the poverty. And it all rears its head again when there is any kind of crisis. Much like the climate change or whatever. It's still the same people who are affected the most.
And I guess that's just how it is. There's a bit... that's kind of... I don´t know, through all of human civilization that has been thus. But how can we be in this age of like way more than 2000 years in our civilization or in our existence and there's still this imbalance of what it is to be human. Or this very different experience of what it is to be human. The experience of what it means to being human might be the same, but what you get back is different. Yes. So you are giving in similar way, but what the world gives you back is remarkably different. I guess that's what I'm sort of seeing in the cracks and paying attention to on the edges.
Oh, thank you. So we looked in the present and we looked back a little bit. Now I invite you to turn your gaze, to look to a time where we learn to live well with the virus. What do you want more of or less of?
There's something around the information and I do not quite understand this. There was a lot of information and then it's gone quite quite. There's something about, you know, how well-informed are we? How well prepared?
I mean, maybe to get into to the past a bit. I'm just so I'm puzzled as to how we weren't prepared enough for this. There are teams of scenario planners and all of this sort of stuff and people have been talking about the pandemic or a big virus would be the thing that would really call us to our attention and bring us to our attention and see how our behaviours... Well, it would just be the things that would change us the most, I guess, or alter our experience.
And so I guess there is something there... more humility in our fragility. And how we are in the world. There's a sense that we are this dominant species and that we can control our environments and our systems and our ecosystems. But that's that isn't the case. And increasingly we're being shown that how we are dominating and how we are expanding our impact is really having a detrimental effect. And killing ourselves, essentially.
So I got this in my head because I'm listening this morning by meditation teacher called Banks around that greed and comparison being made when they transition back. Like, how do we not go back, but go forward into the next kind of humanity 4.0 or whatever it might be. This kind of new iteration. Just not extract or demand so much from the planet or from one another. So less of and more of are kind of combined in that. It is like taking less. Giving more from ourselves. Giving more time to others. Just taking and demanding less.
Thank you. So we are already at the last question. And if you look into the future, what is your wildest dream for the future? What is a dream, you might not even dare to dream sometimes.
I've kind of actually had a taste of it. Why I laughed at the beginning was that this sense of... When you said dare to dream and I take a risk with this: but it's just having less cars, less people around, just more peace. And I've been really reflecting on how this would be like if there were far fewer people in the world.
Mm hmm.
What I am then able to listen to and what I can hear and how I can hear the birds or I can pay attention to things in a different way when there are less people. I don´t know if that makes sense. It is somehow about having less obligation, perhaps, or less people means the quality of the time and attention I'm giving to people and to watching the changes in the seasons and watching this world happen. It provides me with, like, way more wellness.
And I don't think I'm alone in that. We hear a lot about this. Like, oh, slowing down, slowing down. You know how it's really helped people a lot during this time. So it's not really a dream, but it think dream for the world is for people to have less. Less greed and more contentment. What they can create and what they have already.
That's wonderful. Thank you very much. I will stop the recording. Yes.
Thank you. Thank you.
