The World Feels Upside Down
The world feels upside down...
I've always loved this portrait that Michael created...it's one of my favorites of his. This artist is a ceramic sculptor and he had this piece stored underneath a freeway overpass. When he sat on it he said, “I am actually sitting on the bottom of the globe.” From that moment on Michael has always displayed it this way.
But this portrait seems especially fitting today. We're all just trying to figure out which way is up in the middle of all this craziness.
This whole situation is uncharted territory. I feel like, for me, the best thing to do is to get some sense of routine as quickly as possible...defining the New Normal. So, I'm trying to figure out what the next couple of weeks look like...which is hard when things seem to be changing by the hour. We've made a list of all the things that we've had on our to-do-lists at the studio and house forever, and we're slowly working through them, which feels great. I'm excited and thankful for the uninterrupted time we're being given to attend to them.
But, I've been thinking. It's not just that I have this unexpected gift of time (yes, that's how I'm choosing to view this because if I don’t, the anxiety and fear will be my undoing), it's that the ENTIRE WORLD is being put in some kind of Divine Timeout together. Which then makes me feel like when trying to make sense of the situation we find ourselves in, I need to be thinking beyond just my 'to-do' lists.
So what does that mean? To be honest, I'm not sure. I just feel like I'm trying desperately to listen for what this is supposed to be teaching us. Trying to discern the purpose for such a drastic upheaval to life as we know it...all around the world.
I took a break from the news and social media this weekend and you know what? The world was quiet.
We took a walk in the neighborhood and saw more neighbors in that 30 minutes than we have in the last year-and-a-half. Gentle 'hellos' were exchanged as we passed each other, but it was a strange feeling. This isolation together is possibly one of the universe's greatest paradoxes.
I saw a meme on social media last week and it feels perfect. It said, " Kinda feeling like the Earth just sent us all to our rooms to think about that we've done."
Yes.
I keep asking myself: What are we supposed to be doing, learning, changing? I'm trying to think about what we've done.
I don’t have the answers, but I do know it's much bigger than our to-do lists, our home improvement projects, our reading lists, our simple survival of the day-to-day New Normal. I'm vowing to work my hardest not to waste this time. And by no means am I equating being 'busy' with not wasting time. I think that most of us could use some rest. Some kindness to ourselves. Some quiet. And these are all very good uses of our time.
Lord willing, we will never have this opportunity again. Let's be gentle with ourselves, each other, and try to make the very most of it that we can.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
❤️
Monica
