As the world (and individuals) are forced to slow down, I decided to take this opportunity to be more introspective.
Duke Ellington said “Grey skies are just clouds passing over”, so, amidst the frustration, confusion, fear and uncertainty of these temporary times, I’ve made a conscious effort to be aware of what’s going on around me but focus on the positives of our situation.
For the first time in a long while, I have all four of my children home and under the same roof (age 19 to 12). It suddenly dawned on me how grown and independent they have become as I watched them create their individual and collective daily schedules of house chores and routines for this period. Each recognising their own (and each other’s) strengths and weaknesses while compromising and compensating for one another and making sure that laziness was not tolerated. It was a humbling experience because as a mother, I always see each of my children as nothing older that the age of 2, so I was very much appreciative that all those years of screaming “team work makes the dream work” had finally paid off.
I’m one of the lucky people who work from home most times – remotely managing a fast-paced team of colleagues – and due to the nature of our business of assuring we have order in our commercial office complex, dealing with offsite clients, treating tenant’s complaints, organising upgrades of our properties, strategising on new ways of increasing revenue, reminding over ambitious government officials that we know our rights and maintaining our relationships with our partners and support contractors;- I was suddenly struck ( during this down time)by how much we had lost sight of our human compassion in our drive to achieving our goals for making profit.
In our fight for survival during our ever-changing local policies and unpredictable economic business environment, we have focused on swimming relentlessly against the brutal recession (which Nigeria was just coming out of) to try and keep our head above water. This kind of exertion changes you as a person, a business and as a community. I believe this temporary down time is to remind us of what is important- connection. Be it connection with ourselves, our family, with our colleagues or with our community and even with our planet. It is a reminder that we are all connected to one another and that what happens to one person happens to all!
This is a time of universal connection, universal empathy and universal compassion. The entire world is going through the fight against covid -19 TOGETHER!
Hopefully, when this is all over (and it will be over soon) we’ll all come out at the other end with a new perspective. With an understanding that we are all the same underneath this skin of ours (no matter the colour), we suffer the same losses, the same fears, we face the same challenges and we all crave for the same hope – healing. Healing of self, of relationships, of communities, countries and most importantly – our world.
Hopefully, that healing will bring a beautiful REBIRTH !
