Corona is a striking name for a virus. Particularly one that has virtually taken over the world. A crown implies sovereignty. This virus that is a fraction of a micron in size, has consumed people’s lives in so many ways. It has colonized the news and social media causing a veritable infodemic.
Many are feeling tyrannized by the current crisis in the world, even though they may from a practical point of view be quite safe. It is a matter of personal choice whether or not to surrender your personal agency and autonomy and thereby become disenfranchised by the current crisis. How you experience this period of history and how you emerge from it remains a question of personal choice.
Jews in Israel and around the world recently celebrated Passover, the festival of freedom. The message that we took out of this season that has just past is that it is incumbent on a person to free yourself of all psychological and spiritual bondage. It is a time to reassert your freedom to focus exclusively on fully living life in a way that gives full reign to your highest values and ideals.
Freedom for the Jew is not contingent on extremal circumstances or conditions of life. It rather is a special bequest with which Hashem has graced us through the Exodus from Egypt. It is an intrinsic quality. This quality consistently shines through the history Jewish people. Most nations or groups that have been subjected to oppression and persecution, tend to define their identities by those experiences. Jewish identity on the other hand is built on the knowledge that we are a fundamentally a singularly free people. This is despite the numerous malignant strategies people have deployed to suppress or even annihilate us. Twice daily in our prayers we reaffirm the fact that we were liberated by Hashem who took us out of Egypt. This is a freedom that was endowed to all Jews for all times. It is the freedom that we are exhorted to re-experience in an immediate and tangible way at the Passover Seder.
This freedom is the liberty to retain the authorship of your story, rather than have your narrative dictated to you by an external authority. It is therefore the latitude to choose personal agency over a claim to victimhood. Claiming victimhood only serves to entrench the persecutors control over your narrative and therefore your life. While we continue to acknowledge the historical assaults that we have suffered to our dignity and humanity, our appreciation of what genuine freedom means has kept us as a people insusceptible from indulgence in recriminations and self-pity. It is the facility born out of a wholehearted conviction that everything that happens in life, is part of a Divine plan, to which we are not privy nor are we able to make sense of.
This freedom is also the discretion to maintain your sobriety and equanimity which in Hebrew is called menuchat henefesh. It is in another sense the freedom to live in reality. Living in reality means balancing the knowledge of your sense vulnerability, and the anxiety and sometimes even the despair that knowledge can evoke, while remaining equally cognizant of practical and emotional ways keep safe and to deal with whatever challenges may lie ahead. Living in reality means being free to embrace the present moment, without complaint or belief that life should be different from what it is. Living in fully the present moment, pregnant with new possibilities, without hankering over the past or worrying about the future, is the key to not preventing circumstances from hijacking your joy.
That implies not allowing what is happening in the external world to overshadow your internal world. Your internal environment, where your feelings and emotions are informed by your thoughts and attitudes, has to remain under your control and subject to your conscious choice.
We are by now forced to accept everyone is going to be touched by this pandemic. Whether it be on a personal level, family or community, the effects will be inescapable. Embracing this reality is hard but also empowering and can help avoid panic, denial and paralysis.
Facing a reality that you would prefer to ignore or deny is very empowering. One method of building psychological resilience is to mentally rehearse possible challenging scenarios. By brainstorming and engaging your imagination you can plan and mentally rehearse possible strategies to manage stressful scenarios that you may well be confronted with. This is purposeful thought is very different from unproductive worry and paralyzing rumination.
A slave is owned and subject to the will and desires of his owner. A slave can therefore not live in reality. A slave either lives in the reality determined by whomever has ownership and control of his world, or in his own fantasy world. A slave cannot draw meaning from the past or envision a future. We on the other hand are free to recollect the many ways that we have we have dealt with challenges in the past. We are also able to recall the creative strategies that helped us overcome past adversity. It is worthwhile to ponder what you have through past experience discovered about your strength, courage, resilience, resourcefulness, wisdom and skills. With that knowledge you can then work out how to apply that knowledge and experience in dealing with your current challenges.
Only a free person can be self-determining and therefore plan and create a preferred future. As unpredictable as the world seems in the present times, there are still goals that you can set and start working towards. The freedom of self-determination means that you have the power to shape your own growth and development. A person who chooses freedom has agency over their responses at all times, and under almost any conditions.
This is a time that for many will be like a long sabbatical. It seems like a gilt-edged invitation to work on getting closer to becoming that person you have always wished to become. Of course, you would need to start by defining who that person is, and what it would take to get closer to having those qualities. This entirely novel experience is an opportunity to develop new skills and character traits or improve on existing ones. Learn what steps you need to take and what you would need to master to become that person. A good starting point is to consider who you would most prefer to be to the people around you. In what ways can you use your humanity to serve those around you and to help them to more effectively navigate their way through this time.
It is useful to take a searching inventory of your enduring morals, values and ideals. Become clear about what is really important to you. Then decide how you will keep that knowledge close. That will enable you to draw guidance, security and strength from begin mindful of and keeping faithful to what truly counts in your life. Consistency and having a solid anchor in life are the bedrock of a person’s sense of security. Having a stable foundation serves to ensure that what you build in your life will be aligned with what is truly most meaningful and important to you.
It is no secret by now that the world is in the process of a marvelously portentous transformation. For the individual this can feel apocalyptic and overwhelming. The way to manage those feelings is to treat your life as a project that you work on day by day. Each day you can discover new insights about yourself and about the world. Through those discoveries you can take incremental measures to adjust and evolve one step at a time.
Society is learning from and adapting to this new way of life as the drama unfolds. Over time we will all benefit from the evolving collective wisdom, resources and skills that will accrue from the growth of each individual who chooses to exercise their freedom to enhance their own level of consciousness.
Providence is presenting to us is invitation to live more fully, thoughtfully and deeply; to become more deeply engaged with what it means to be alive, to be human and living in these times. This opportunity is not going to last forever. You can use this time to deepen your appreciation of the gifts of life and the privilege of the life we have; to be grateful for every new day; for health and for the people around you. This is an opportunity to exercise your divinely bequeathed prerogative to up our game, on a physical, emotional and spiritual level.
This could be a time to discover your unique strengths and potential for greatness, and to use that knowledge to determine how to most elegantly approach your next chapter. This has to be one of the best times in history to be alive.
The writer is a South Africa-based clinical psychologist, an organizational development consultant, expert witness and life coach who has appeared extensively on radio and television and hosted two radio shows on psychological matters. www.leonardcarr.com