MEDITATION ON...

Paul Dulski
06/01/21 13:25:23

THE PANDEMIC

The pandemic turned my world upside down. Can you relate to that too? For the first time I felt and realized what it means to be locked in a cage like a bird — flapping your wings and beating against the bars. I miss my freedom. Anger and helplessness are accumulating within me, and when I look ahead, I can only see empty space. It brings me great sadness. I can’t get over the fact that I left Africa, and that I wasn’t able to accomplish my goals while I was there. I also long for people’s smiles, their concern, and openness — these are not present in Europe. Especially now, when I walk on the street and passersby run away from me as though I were a criminal. I miss the sun too. Yes, my lovely, warm, and happy sun. On the other hand the weather prevailing in Europe reflects the gloominess of our society. Never-ending rainfalls and clouds don’t encourage me to get out of bed.

I wrote about it because some of you may share my experience. During the past months I had a chance — as many of you for sure — to talk with different people. It’s not possible to not talk about it this way or another. Many of them asked: “And what are you going to do now?” I don’t know, I can’t answer this question because everything has changed and will probably never be the same as before. Some asked about my health. They said: “Health comes first!” And do you know what? Health is important, but I think that it isn’t the most important thing. People believe that when they’re healthy, they can do everything, but sickness nullifies everything. But that’s not true. You can be happy and valuable while being sick at the same time. You can achieve great things being ill or disabled. Do you know what’s more important than health?
I thought about God. How he must have felt when He created this awesome planet, when the universe was still harmonious, when people received more than they needed, and… they destroyed it in the blink of an eye. I would feel devastated. But not God. He is called happy. Why? Because He’s not focused on the problem, but on the solution. The key to maintain emotional balance is attitude.
Am I going to be sick? I don’t know, time will tell. But why should I worry about it now, when it may never happen? But what if I get sick? Well, I want to have a good attitude, and think that I’ll recover. Fear is our enemy. It can paralyze and takes away our will to fight. When you’re scared of the vision of death your organism stops fighting. So, instead of thinking that you’ll get sick and die — think that if you get sick, then you will recover. And this is rational because statistics show that more people win that sickness than die.
Attitude is of greater importance. How to develop a positive attitude?

DON’T FEEL — ACT

We, people of well-developed countries, are unhappy because we focus to much on our emotions. I love a scene from the movie The Iron Lady with the fantastic Meryl Streep who plays the role of the prime minister of Great Britain — Margaret Thatcher. She went to the doctor and he asked her how she was feeling. She was outraged and answered that nowadays too many people focus on emotions and feelings instead of thinking about how to solve their problems and to work. Better ask me what do I work on, or what do I do, what goals do I have.
Covid changed a lot, confused many things, but if it hadn’t appeared, I would probably never have written a book and would never have found out how much pleasure I find in writing, and how it helps me to chill out. I would never have learnt so many things about writing, marketing, and e-commerce. I just want to say that there’s always a way out of every situation, and that we can always look at the positives. Sometimes, the only thing we need is to put less attention on ourselves, on how we feel, and simply begin to act, work. We can use this time to learn new skills. Perhaps we never had time to do that and now we have. We can learn a new language or fast typing. We can begin to explore the world by reading books or watching vlogs on YouTube. My friend began to embroider and she makes a lot of nice and useful things.
Christopher Reeve is an actor, I guess, widely-known by most of you. He had a specific face and played the role of Superman. However, he was a simple human in a real life. Once he fell off a runaway horse, broke his neck, and was paralyzed. The injury was so serious that since then he could never breath on his own and was connected to the respirator. How did he feel? He surely had many reasons to go to pieces. He had a promising career — he was a movie star. He likely had some moments of doubts, crisis, or just as he had said “a will to die”. But he never focused on that. He never allowed his mind to feel sorry for himself, and he began to act. The former Superman was elected Chairman of the American Paralysis Association of the National Organization on Disability whose goal is to make people aware of the importance of medical exams on paralysis. He agreed to test on his body new methods of the therapy with the goal to heal his spinal cord injury. He released an autobiography Still Me in 1998 which became a bestseller. Together with his wife Dan, he opened in Short Hills, New Jersey the first center for paralyzed people in order to help them cope with life challenges. His wife led a foundation which supported research on curing the effects of paralysis. Surely his life as an actor would have gone in a different direction, but due to his strong will to fight and good attitude he never gave up and made perfect use of his possibilities.

IN ISOLATION, STOP BEING ISOLATED

Loneliness in isolation can cause a lot of harm to us. Though we need solitude from time to time, it can have really devastating effects on our mind in the long run. We may begin to like to isolate ourselves and trigger some social phobias leading to severe depressive states. What can we do in order to avoid such a situation? Make good use of modern technology. Video-conference — ZOOM or the popular WhatsApp. I’m aware that it’s not the same as seeing someone face to face, but it’s better than getting overwhelmed by our negative thoughts. Try something new, something you have never done before. What do I mean? Step away from people’s behavioral patterns. They have this strong need to attract others’ attention. They display a lot of statuses, posts, and so on. These images depict greetings, landscapes, etc. If someone likes that, it’s his business, but I realized that I don’t have to be bothered by such things when I’m not interested in them. Isn’t it better to think of a person who is lonely, shut in his or her house, and to call this person to share something interesting? Yes, sharing something interesting… Except for standard questions about health and the weather, it is a good idea to prepare an interesting subject to talk about. Something that will make our conversation upbuilding. What can that be? A thought from a book we read, thoughts that we have, a movie which taught us something, or a memory. There’s plenty of such things. We need to add some value to our conversations. Then you won’t feel lonely. Valuable conversation may motivate us to make changes in our thinking, to meditate, and to act. Remember, an inspired man is never bored or lonely.

BE NEUTRAL — DON’T POLITICIZE

The virus may not attack our body, but may cause the atmosphere in our family to get sick. Our world has enough of divisions. We don’t want to divide it more. Limits of the truth has been blurred by a mass of lies and political influences promoted in the media, we are confronted with hundreds of conspiracy theories. Therefore, we should never allow someone or something to divide our family and to deprive us of our positive attitude. We need to accept and respect others’ rights to make personal decisions and to unassisted interpretation of “the facts”. It’s better to not impose on somebody what to believe in that matter. If someone wants to use the vaccine, he has the right to do that, and we also want to respect the ones who don’t want to. In fact, everyone wants to take care of his life. Good family relationships are more important than arguing about the things that we can’t change. Instead of fighting among ourselves, we need to pull together to fight our problems.
Therefore stay healthy in this coronavirus time and maintain positive attitude!

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