Deja Vu

The Third Wave

Here we go again.  I am coming to appreciate what a pandemic means.  My key lesson is that respect, responsibility and solidarity are three focal words that sum up how to live a life that is good, wholesome and healthy for myself and for the rest of humanity.  Just follow this three-point golden rule for relating with self, neighbour and the planet, and all will be okay.  When you don't, our world loses its balance and there is trouble.  

On the street today, I had a frightening experience that made me ask myself - Why don't we ever learn?  The scene is while I am walking along, I become aware of a person behind me with a bad cough.  So I moved to the side and what I then saw appalled me.  The person was coughing and coughing, and on entering his home, he ripped off his mask and just threw it down onto the footpath.  How could you?  What does that say about how you see and treat other people?      

As a result of such irresponsible behaviour of the few, we are seeing the rise of the third wave of the pandemic in Thailand.  Actions have consequences.  This is not rocket science.  This is what we learn in kindergarten when we run away with another kid's teddy bear.  There are big problems.  

This pandemic is teaching us over again how to be decent human beings and how to look after each other and our planet.  For the sake of the good of all, it is like Mother Nature is offering us a universal lesson in how to live together.  

In NGO world. I hear ones talk that this is a time for retreat, to stand back and reflect on what sort of world we want, to re-group.  Then we come back to build the world back better and on surer foundations.  

Yes, it is time to go back to the desert to rebuild and nourish our basic relationships with God, self and others. As Pope Francis says, we prepare not for an era of change but for the change of an era.  Whether we like it or not,  God is being kind in showing us a way to continue transforming our world into the Reign of God, a world of the Resurrection. 

Resurrexit sicu dixit.