"What the f is happening?
I need a plan!
I have to organize my future!
I must see ahead!"
– screamed the brain
"No."
– replied the heart
"You have to let it go
drop it
surrender,
stop clinging to this obsessive need for projecting an image on tomorrow
and start accepting today for what it is.”
“But, how?”
– asked the brain
“Well, just remember
that this too shall pass,
tears will dry
clouds will move
and before you’ll realize it,
the weather will be different.
But you won’t be able
to find peace
if you keep wishing for the sun
when you have no power over the clouds.
All we got
is now,
accept it for what it is
and breathe through it.
Keep on being patient
and trust that soon,
weather will change.”
Love,
Clem
I woke up that Sunday 22nd of March, in my room, in Mexico City. I had my breakfast outside. I saw my roomies. One of them had put a live dancing festival on Youtube. At that moment, you could feel it: the unusualness of dancing to a DJ on Youtube on a Sunday. It just wasn’t every-day-normal-life stuff.
Everyone could feel it: there was a virus with a beer name in the air. It was no joke, it was no movie.
The future was becoming blurry and the present had become stressful.
“I’m gonna see if there are flights,” I said before heading to the airport.
I had done the pros and cons. I had all my arguments ready. I was not able to enjoy my Mexican home anymore, knowing that my friends and family were locked down, knowing that an invisible monster in the shape of a giant cough was coming to my sunny city. I needed safety and grounding.
Yet, when the Aeromexico worker said:
“I have a flight that leaves tonight”
I felt a desperate scream inside my guts – I felt my inner child bursting into tears, feeling ripped off from everything we had built, from all the sacrifices we had made, all for a fucking disease that was anchoring fear in my heart.
I immediately asked for the next flight. That was not an option.
I took the Uber back home, cried in the arms of my roomies: “I’m leaving tonight.”
As I landed the next day and saw the “Welcome to Paris” sign, I wondered how many people were questioning their lives’ choices right now. I could feel my brain getting all wrapped up in its own clouds of "OMG did I make the right decision what are we gonna do now are you hungry I need to sleep wait where are we" when he hit me: I had to stop fighting. Stop resisting.
Go with "the flow" and bathe in this uncertainty, or I will never find inner peace.
Cause this fucking virus, killing both our loved ones and our dreams with one stone, is challenging our biggest resistance as human beings: our resistance to change.
We hate change.
We hate losing control.
Because that means we have to trust.
Now one-third of the world is being forced to stay immobile, our old ways of living are gone and we don't know what to rely on. Somehow, somewhere, we pressed "pause" on the world. After years of running without stopping to ask where we were going, everything changed and the frenzy stopped.
But like always, we have a choice. We can see this weird-ass time as a step back, as paralysis of our minds and souls, or we can use it as a reset.
A reset to trust again, in something deeper than money and future plans: trust in ourselves, the universe, and human nature. Trust in the present moment.
Trust that on some levels, this is what we were meant to be living this year.
Trust that somehow, there is a reason why this is happening, and there is a lesson to be learned from it.
Could this be the wake-up call you were looking for?
Is it possible that before being locked down physically, you were already locked down by your own thoughts and created patterns?
It's ok and normal to be anxious right now. Resetting is uncomfortable. It takes time and requires courage. To reset means tearing down old patterns and beliefs to create new ones from scratch.
We all need to take the time to feel every emotion coming our way, heck some days I feel like I'm feeling everything at once - full mood swing forces. Memories, places, unresolved dilemmas come back because well.. the brain has plenty of time to do so.
Trust that you have everything you need: you already have the guidance and strength to go through this time. Trust that it is still time to live the life you’ve dreamed of. Trust that yes, 2020 can still be the year of your truest self. Because when this is all over, we are going to choose again.
So as we wish for our lives to get back to normal, let's use this reset to ask ourselves:
- Which part of "normal" do you want to get back to?
- What are you gonna get rid of?
- What are you finally be grateful for?
- What will you stop taking for granted?
It is springtime.
Let your eyes be amazed by how fast life changes around us.
Flowers bloom and petals fall down.
Surrender to change.
Take time to reset.
Ask yourself and trust yourself.
We'll bloom again friends.
And this time, we can choose how.
I love you.
We've got this.
- Excerpt from Cleo Wade's newsletter -
From the unbelievable disappointment I feel about my country’s president, to the despair I feel over how much deadlier this virus will be for my country’s most vulnerable citizens, to the strangeness we all feel as we navigate isolation and physical distancing - I just kept thinking to myself, what kind of hell is this?
While at the bottom of this low point, I was scrolling through the internet and I randomly saw a quote from Steve Harvey (putting a spin on an old Winston Churchill saying) that said,
“If you are going through hell, keep going. Why would you stop in hell?”
I instantly realized that I had stopped in hell.
I’d forgotten to keep going.
I’d forgotten that I have the power to keep going.
I immediately took a breath and remembered the mantra:
Can I breathe through this? Yes. I can.
I also remembered that this time is something we are living through, not living in.
The current state of the world is not the permanent state of the world.
And our worst day is not our whole life.
- Cleo Wade
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