Befriending Loneliness I

This week’s quote is from Dr. Christiane Wolf, physician and mindfulness teacher at InsightLA, about reactions to the social restrictions we experienced in 2020.

If anything, this pandemic has taught us two things: that we are profoundly interconnected, and that we need to slow down.

Sometimes we need to be shocked out of our autopilot into waking up…

The practice of mindfulness is always about pausing, noticing, and choosing the right response. Mindfulness practice strengthens our capacity to see more clearly what is good and healthy for us as individuals and society – and what is not…

Right responses come from a place of wisdom and caring.

At this moment of transition, please pause for a moment and take stock:

What have you learned since the outbreak of the pandemic?

What personal choices you made during that time would you like to keep?

What are the things on a community or societal level that you would like to be part of a solution moving forward?

During this pandemic we need to save our sanity and keep people safe, no questions asked. But just reacting to what’s happening right now is not enough. To really reduce harm, we have to look at the bigger picture too.

We can — and need to — make it a way of life to slow down and notice the harm that is happening… so we can work with it. For everyone’s sake.