Something Beautiful is Happening (You Are Not Alone).

I wrote this originally for the Punk Rock Therapy Facebook Page in March.  I read it again recently, and decided it was appropriate to share again.







 Something beautiful is happening.

Let’s not over look it.

And yes, things do LOOK very apocalyptic, on the surface. On a global scale, things are shutting down. Businesses are closing their doors. Venues are canceling performances. Schools are closing. Even the movie theaters are empty.
Meanwhile, there is this constant fervor. The talking heads are talking. The pundits keep “pundit-ing”. The wary have grown more wary and cynicism covers up all too many of our uncertainties.

All of this is rampant ground for conspiracy theories and fear bating at its most convincing.

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To be fair, some degree of fear and anxiety are necessary and appropriate responses to our current circumstance.
COVID-19 is a clear public health threat, the size of which we may have not really experienced before.
The precise mechanisms for how COVID-19 is spread are currently not known. It appears that the virus is spread through close person to person contact with heavily populated spaces being particularly high risk for the spreading of the virus. Hence we are conscripted today into further isolation.
As humans, when we experience unknown threats, we instinctively draw from past fearful scenarios to determine what we can anticipate going forward. For some of us, that puts us in the scary headspace of our personal life histories, serving to trigger our internal vulnerabilities and cause us to feel ourselves once again “at risk” (of what, exactly, may not be precisely clear).
Others are left to pull from the long catalogue of historical tragedies and upsets, and hope desperately that we are not being subject to another such debacle.
Neither scenario does much though in truly preparing us for the GIVEN situation, and lead us instead down defensive responding and perpetual reactivity.
For me, I take comfort in how unprecedented this moment truly is. I am also given hope that the steps that we are taking, may actually PREVENT a crisis of a much greater severity. And yes, I am touched by the unexpected beauty of the moment.



Repeatedly, we have heard how this virus is “only” a threat for “the most vulnerable”; persons with compromised immune systems, the elderly, people who have made far too many visits to medical settings, already.



Also- this has served as a damning and confounding aspect of addressing the problem itself. On one hand, people are in need of treatment. On the other hand, we want to keep those most susceptible to the spread of the disease that are already IN the hospitals and recovery centers free from this deadly contaminant.


So- reading the writing on the walls, and learning from the episode at hand, we have re-scripted our response to everything.
In defiance of our Machiavellian tendencies, we are taking DRASTIC action- to address this situation at a global scale, with the aid of science and the spreading of information to modify how we live our lives for the foreseeable future, in defense of our most vulnerable.
From the NBA to the local bar, the financiers of the eternal money-go-round have evacuated their posts, stepping back from the till, and leaning in to the cause and efforts being taken to avert a widespread catastrophe.


Meanwhile, hospitals are reinventing how they deliver care, and looking for ways to limit person to person contacts, while ensuring an increase in actual medical care and treatment. IN COME the the biohazard accommodations. OUT GO the unnecessary medical supports and nonessential providers. Lap tops are being dispensed to hospital clerical staff who are working from home. Everybody is keeping those most at risk in the forethought of their minds.
In this strange social economy, we seem now to have had an opportunity to reorder everything, however fleetingly, to the needs of the very people we so often overlook and forget about.

And the streets are quieting.

And the people are not going about business as usual.

Like a living prayer around us, time is at an anxious standstill.

The music has stopped.

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All eyes and hearts are on our future, and what will come from this. We crane our necks now, to spot any developments with our ever-emerging science and care.
With hope, we turn to those that may divine an antidote or treatment that will allow us all to move once again, back to the odd order that we have come to think of as “normal”.
For me, as I am forced to halt my normal operations as a psychologist, I am somewhat awestricken and humbled. Is this really happening? Are we who take our health and wellness for granted really dispensing with our daily practices and habits in the interest of those we can’t see and don’t know?
Might it be that through this social distancing, that we find finally the social contact and connection that we have seemingly lost?
Is it feasible, that our current systemic disruptions serves today as a testament to a system that is for once doing what it was actually designed to do?
Might our compassion and empathic capacity finally find a foothold in us, as we look through biohazard visors, into the eyes of strangers, and say finally and forever, “Brother/sister! Fellow human! I am here! And you are not alone!”?
Stay safe out there, people!
If you are at risk in any way, know today that it matters greatly to the rest of us.

We will not move on without you.

Adrian Lemberger, Kristin Belkofer and 56 others
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