Introduction
I believe we are searching for a new normal in this post pandemic time period. The difficulty is that we are worn and we are fearful given what we experienced the last three years. While we may no longer be hyper vigilant about COVID protocols, I think one of the outcomes of the pandemic is that we are afraid that we don’t matter anymore. In particular, we feel our work doesn’t matter. Furthermore, we feel like our efforts each day don’t matter, because we don’t really feel like we are making a difference anymore. Life has begun to feel like a treadmill that continually speeds up and we are running faster and faster to just to stay in place.
And in our search for a new normal, we long for a different experience of the world. We long for meaningful relationships, and meaningful work. We long for a life that connects us to something greater. In short, we long for purpose and hope in a world filled with grief, pressure, and turbulence.
Through The Eyes Of A Child
My wife, Jane, and I live in a small town in eastern Iowa. When we first moved into the house that we bought from the family who built it, we were the youngest people on the street by many decades. Everyone around us could have been our grandparents or our children’s grandparents. It was a special time and a special place to raise our two young boys.
Now, we are one of the older couples on the street, and many of the houses around us are filled with young families and children. I love watching the children ride their bikes up and down the street. I love watching them play games in their back yards. I love watching them make chalk drawings in their driveways and sidewalks. Their voices fill the air with joy and adventure. Imagination flourishes all around us.
I believe that as we move through these early years post the global pandemic that we long to see and experience the world through the eyes of a child. For the most part, children do worry about politics, famine, taxes, or work. Instead, they see each new day as a time of undefined adventures and possibilities. They find joy in a swing set, or riding a bike through a muddy puddle after a rainy morning. They marvel in delight at a lawn filled with dandelions. They laugh when the sun breaks through the clouds.
For these young ones, making a difference is not the goal. For them, doing something to get it done is not the goal. For them, changing the world is not the goal.
Instead, they are just out to experience the world in its totality. They just want to be a part of the world. For children, the goal is to experience the now in all of its fullest glory and miraculous potential. They awaken each day with new eyes, and see opportunity around every corner. We, as adults, can learn a lot from them. We can rediscover this perspective when we choose to see old things with new eyes.
See Old Things With New Eyes
“Change is not about understanding new things or having new eyes,” writes Dee Hock, Founder & CEO Emeritus of Visa International; “it’s about seeing old things with new eyes - from different perspectives.”
We were discussing this powerful quote when he shared with me his story about seeing old things with new eyes. As an avid cyclist, he had ridden all over the country and loved every minute of it. One day while riding on a rural two lane highway, a semi truck drove by him, missing him by inches. The truck was going so fast and it was so close to him that it sucked the shirt right up and over his head, blinding him to what was before him. The next thing he knew he was in the ditch with a mangled bike.
Once he realized that he was alive and not badly injured, he pulled down his shirt and looked upon the world around him. Everything was so beautiful and so alive, including himself. He felt it was a miracle that he had survived. He felt overwhelmed, because he was looking at the world and realizing the gift of being able to be a part of it. As he said to me that day, “I never realized how precious and miraculous it is to be alive in such a beautiful place. From that moment onward, I did not take anything for granted. It is all a gift.”
Not long after hearing this experience, I was met an older executive who was recovering from prostrate cancer surgery. He was deeply humbled that he could have the surgery, and that it was successful. On the way home from the hospital, he shared with me that he and his wife waited at a stop sign in small rural town just as the local elementary school let out for the day. While the children crossed the street in front of their stopped car, he burst into tears and sobbed. “They were so beautiful and innocent,” he shared with me. “Their whole lives lay out before them and they were happy, excited. They were just joyful. I realized right then and there that I missed this wholesomeness and open to possibilities perspective. I missed seeing the world as the miracle it truly is. Through my tears, I realized I needed to rediscover the miracle of being alive. I wanted to see the world through the eyes of a child and to be awe struck by the daily miracles taking place all around and within me. I have been reclaiming this every day since that moment and my life is richer because of this choice.”
Change happens on multiple levels in our lives each and every day, if not each and every moment. We just need to pause and see old things with new eyes and from different perspectives. This is one of the first steps to finding a new normal.
Believe In The Light Beyond
I have lived twice in Mexico. The first time I participated in an off campus study program during college. On this trip, I lived with a Mexican family in Cuernavaca, and went to language school each day. The second time I was a high school teacher who was a chaperone along with the Spanish teacher for a group of third year, high school Spanish students. We lived in a rural northern village near Hermosillo. Here, we did a service project in the village and the students got to learn and practice their language.
It was during this second trip that I had a most unique experience. During the week day mornings, we did our service project and the students had their daily language lessons. In the afternoons, the students broke into small groups and wandered through the village, visiting with families and learning about the people who lived there along with sharing about their own lives, all of which took place in Spanish.
One afternoon, I was visiting with a group of older women over a cup of very strong and good coffee plus some cookies when the conversation turned to a subject that made no sense to me. The older women were talking about their daughters and, they kept referencing a phrase which translated into English meant “the coming of the light.”
I sat silently during this conversation, listening as they laughed and shared about the challenges and joys of “the coming of the light.” Finally, I asked what this phrase meant. One of the older women turned to me and said, “The coming of the light is the phrase we use in our village when a child is being born. This phrase is all encompassing because the birth of a child is more than just the physical act of birthing. It is the arrival a new child and a transformation of all involved, the mother, the family, and the community. It is a blessing and a gift.”
Years later, at the birth of our first child, and later at the birth of our second child, I understood what the phrase, “the coming of the light,” really meant. It was a transformational moment, and it continues to be a transformational experience.
John O’Donohue, a poet, philosopher and scholar, and a native Gaelic speaker from County Clare, Ireland, in conversation with John Quinn, former broadcaster with RTE’ (Irish National Radio), in his book, Walking In Wonder: Eternal Wisdom for a Modern World (Convergent, 2015), writes: “What is the source of the light that banishes our fear? I read a lovely sentence in a Hindu book years ago which said, consciousness always shines with the light from beyond itself. One of my images of the divine is that it is light in some form, and that the divine light works tenderly with human freedom. If you don’t believe that the light is there, you will experience the darkness. But if you believe the light is there, and if you call the light towards you, and if you call it into whatever you’re involved in, the light will never fail you.”
I believe, on one level, that during this post pandemic time period where we are searching for a new normal, we have lost our connection with the light, and we have lost the ability to see the light in each other and ourselves. We also have lost the feeling of being that light in the world, and we have lost our oneness with the source from which the light comes from. In simple terms, we have lost the feeling, and the memory that there is light in the world.
However, just because we have lost the ability, the feeling, and the memory of the light and our connection to it, does not mean there is no light. The light is always present, and always a presence in our lives. Our challenge is to believe in the light beyond and to call the light toward us.
Call The Light Towards You
It takes great inner strength to call the light towards us. The first step is to remove our blinders and see the world as it is. Then, we have to have an unbelievable depth of faith that, upon taking this action of calling the light towards us, it will come. We must have the courage to believe that this act will make a difference. The challenge is that we will have no idea when and how the light will show up.
The quirky thing about all of this is that once we have removed the blinders and have seen the world as it really is, we often discover that the light has been there all along. It is us, with all our imperfections, faults, defaults, broken places, and expectations, that has been standing in the way. What we have forgotten is that we are always moving forward into the light of a new day and the possibility of a new way of living.
Where we often get stuck in calling the light toward us is that we worry about today, tomorrow, and all things that might come to pass. Some days we are even consumed by this worry, generating a deep level of anxiety and pain. Above the desk of my late mother-in-law, was the following framed saying: “Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its troubles. It empties today of its strength.” I believe this is the major choice we must make. If we choose to define our lives by worrying, we empty the inner strength by which we can call the light toward us. We empty the capacity of the divine light to be a part of, and a presence in our lives. In short, we remove the possibility of the light to be a catalyst for transforming this post pandemic time period into a new and more healthy normal.
Staying centered in the midst of our search for a new normal is an important choice. Calling the light toward us is an act of faith. When the combination of the two converge into one action, we have the capacity to be resilient as we move through our short and long term challenges. We have the capacity to search and, in time, discover a new normal.
FYI: To be continued on Monday, September 18.
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