We could have never imagined the scenario that we are currently living through. The world is under siege from an unseen virus and from a rigor of our own self realizations that we are actually flawed and fragile creatures that survive only because we are part of a larger whole and overseen by a higher power.
It is a time when many of us, even those not inclined to do so, are slowing down and becoming introspective to some degree. We spend time alone and think about our place in the world. We think about our priorities of family, work, and life. We come to realize what truly brings us joy, and peace. We identify what our physical needs truly are such as food and shelter, and what our spiritual needs also truly are.
The gravity of a worldwide pandemic certainly disrupts our routines, scares us, and rattles our trust – sometimes making us lash out in fear. It breaks normal patterns, and makes new ones. It creates new priorities and we discover our new, evolving normal. We also begin to realize that mankind cannot thrive without creativity. It is in fact, the dreamers and creative thinkers who not only provide us with the visual arts, dance, music and more to sustain our spirits, but it is they who find workarounds to sharing resources, who discover the vaccines, and who find ways to sustain us quite literally like humanity’s connective tissue.
When creative people are quarantined they reach for the knitting, and they reach for the guitars, and they reach for the paintbrush, because they know that it is just as important as the sustenance of food. Just as Kandinsky found correlations between music and color, we too must find correlation between the lovely quiet that has started to emerge from stay-at-home directives and a sub level of sound where music and wind chimes and children’s laughter and our own voices become the light and color of our souls. Those who don’t remember how to hear that level within themselves are the ones that are panicking by not being out in the public. They need us to help.
I am thankful every day for my life. I am thankful every day for those people that I have surrounded my heart with for they are the thinkers, and the musicians, and the painters, and the knitters. They are the ones who carefully steward mankind’s spirit during times of crisis and share it back to those in need like fabulous little morsels when the world is starving.
Despite the fear and the anxiety that is prevalent right now, I know that we will emerge from this as humans with a greater love for each other, a greater tolerance of each other’s flaws, and a stronger mankind overall. We must never let the louder voices be the voices that we follow blindly. We must instead be quieter and follow the much more subtle voices of silver thread networked between each other.
Kelly E. James 