Numb. Slow. Unmotivated. Paralyzed. Uninspired. Despairing. Blank. Grey. Depressed. Sad. These are the words people have been using to describe how they are currently feeling. It seems we are experiencing a collective numbness, the likes of which no one (in my generation at least) has ever experienced.
We are suffering from what I’m going to call PPTSD: Post Pandemic Traumatic Stress Disorder. We might also call it: Post Political Traumatic Stress Disorder because it seems that literally everything has become a political issue over which people are choosing to argue, fight, and divide.
For the past three years (I might argue since 2016), we have been bombarded with one violent event after another: contentious elections, school shootings, insurrections, a pandemic that some decided to make political, the rising cost of housing, inflation, “supply chain issues,” “food shortages,” global warming/climate change, the whole world on fire, war in Ukraine, the threat of violence from China, etc. etc. etc. The bombardment has been CONSTANT. Every minute of every day we are getting pummeled by one threat after another. It’s exhausting.
No human was meant to experience this kind of constant external assault. We were not wired for this. If you happen to be sensitive, an empath and/or healer, the effect has been even more profound. And there is no sign of things lightening up. Until the current system is done with its dying (for what we are really witnessing is the death of an empire and any system built on a similar foundation of fear, power, oppression, and control), the writhing and screaming will continue.
We have a right to feel numb, unmotivated, paralyzed, uninspired, etc. We were not made for this kind of constant, collective trauma – especially one of this nature over which it seems we have no control.
The old world is dying and dying it must. We cannot save it. Neither should we try. That does not mean, however, that there isn’t SOMETHING WE CAN DO! As the current world, rooted in fear, power, oppression, and control is dying, a new world IS being born to take its place:
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
Isaiah 43: 19a
A new world is being born among us, and we are the ones who have been quietly and stealthily building it. It is being born out of our unwillingness to submit to the status quo. It is being born out of our inherent sense of value and refusing to work in conditions or for pay that doesn’t reflect that value. It’s being born out of our love for the planet and our decisions to treat her more lovingly through our buying and growing decisions. It’s being born out of our care and concern for our children, and out of our hope for their future. It’s being born out of the generation of young people paving a new path to self-sufficiency through the creation of innovative business ventures. It’s being born out of those who have untied themselves from societal/religious/institutional conditioning, discovering their own truth, and living from that truth freely.
While we cannot escape the trauma of the dying world in its death throes, perhaps we can find hope in the new world that is being born, and inspiration for how we might begin or deepen our participation in its creation.
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Lauri Ann Lumby 