A crisis leaves space where hard feelings can become undone and softened. Vulnerability provides an opportunity for broken spaces to become openings that birth new ground. Forgiveness. Softer edges.
My family is from Northern Italy in the edge of some of the hardest hit covid virus communities. I have been checking in on them to see if they are all right. I was meaning to talk to an aunt and uncle where there was tension from our previous visit. We have not talked in the last 3 years and this felt like a perfect opportunity to reach out. I thought about it for a few days before I finally found the courage to make the call.
I speak to my uncle on the other line and his voice is welcoming and upbeat. He passes me on to my aunt and we have a conversation acting as if nothing had happened between us. With a few bits of information. I hear how the quarantine is going. I catch up on all my cousins. I ask about health and what happens in a day. And in time we start putting little offerings of generousity.
“We have nothing but great memories of you and your husband when you came to stay with us” my aunt says with kindness.
“I will never forget what you did for me and my husband when you came here to visit” I respond.
And like that we find an opening.
A crisis leaves space where hard feelings can become undone and softened. Vulnerability provides an opportunity for broken spaces to become openings that birth new ground. Forgiveness. Softer edges.
Without taking away from the intense suffering, death, and hardship this pandamic announces, there is also a profound collective opportunity. We cannot do business as usual and everyone is off their game. In all of this uncertainty there is great deal of vulnerability and it can be an opportunity to do something like call and check in on someone that remained unfinished business. Or to pause and think about what can you do to make those around you feel a little better.
Find an opening. Let this crisis, this global pandemic provide you with an excuse to reach out and seek forgiveness or resolution or simply an opportunity to observe yourself doing an act of kindness where you might have only engaged in hard feelings.