Re-imagining the Future
Re-imagining the Future by Marion Ragaliauskas
I have a study at home but I’m not using it. It doesn’t offer the light and warmth of our spare room nor the same opportunity to pause my work and watch from the upstairs window the (much reduced) comings and goings of folk or the wildlife, the moon and clouds.
The frenetic activity and virtual meetings of the last two weeks are starting to subside and a new rhythm is emerging. I’m mindful of my expanding consciousness, of the strange thread pulling thoughts of past, present and future together as never before and my present awareness of the everyday lives of others.
Corona virus maybe foremost in our minds but the day to day PCV (pre-corona virus) challenges continue. I hold, simultaneously, in my thoughts my once vital and engaged neighbour - yachtsman and writer - and his wife as she watches as his personality slowly drifts away, his Alzheimer’s progressing and his hair growing longer.
My dear friend and colleague whose daughter’s mastectomy surgery is underway, unable to help and hold and hug as she always does. The police officer’s grief of losing his mother last week and the promise of separation from the family that can comfort him as he’s needed on the ‘front line’. The five year old boy in need of round-the clock-care, the woman waiting for her liver transplant, the girl/boy who doesn’t fit the binary narrative, the father who has lost his sense of identify with his source of income.
And those that always have and always will be care-givers, cleaner- uppers, open-hearted listeners and tell me what you need-ers. Out beyond my immediate circle, into the towns and villages and even further beyond the oceans – ordinary and man-made hells and private heartaches.
No different to what always is…. and yet. The consciousness-expanding-wake-up-and-see-what’s-happening-offering of this moment is something to relish and seize. This field of consciousness, this interconnected, trans contextual moment offers us the fullest of possibilities.
Alongside the ordinary hells, we are re-membering the ordinary ecstasies. Cooking. Eating together, sharing walks and noticing the bird song, tending our gardens and our souls, breathing cleaner air and fertilising our undernourished and ignored creativity and finding ways to express our love and care. Acknowledging that we are whole people with whole lives that diminish when separated out and boxed off and weighed and valued for what it’s worth.
This moment calls for all of us to be awake and carry our awakening with a sense of purpose that recognises that if ever there was a time to re-imagine the future – and find ways of bringing it into being - this is it.