(Opinion) COVID-19: Challenge and opportunity

By Rev. Polycarp Gbaja
@PolycarpGbaja
In times, seasons and life, some events are large or powerful enough to provoke massive shifts from the usual. Our responses could be varied from the time those events get initiated. Sometimes we merely want to be the first to ‘analyze’, long before we are acquainted with the facts, expertise, or implications of an issue. A little initial circumspect observation might help us receive a bit more, as the unfolding phenomenon reveals and throws sufficient light of understanding.
We know some things about the all pervading Coronavirus. But not everything yet; whether as a present health issue, its true source or even its consequent multiple impact on the future. Following its initial and ongoing primary attack as agent of a lethal disease, many components of its secondary or tertiary impact are still unraveling.
But the critical aspect of our present response to avoid it are clear. It makes sense to work with the PROTOCOLS put forth to help keep us SAFE and STAY ALIVE. Absolutely no need to fight one another over conjectures, rumors and projections of our imaginations.
The Coronavirus has components beyond just immediate physical health. Its manifest nature is impacting our economies, mental and emotional states. It has initiated Government policies that are affecting our socio-cultural interface and severe protocols that have stripped us of the very freedom of movement or conduct we have been used to. Yet, probably as dangerous, or even more, is the extreme FEAR generated, that has literally left millions in the world paralyzed, generating knee-jerk reactions across regions and nations, as many draw false inferences and conclusions that cloud truth or perspective or reality.
But this present calamity has also accorded us the opportunity to RECALIBRATE ourselves individually and corporately in our interface with one another. Manifest system failures are forcing us to see why we have to make adjustments to previous policies, practices and arrangements that have become untenable in a post Coronavirus world.
Everything we see within and around us today are linked or related to our behaviors, practices and habits/culture we have embraced over time. We have become what we THINK, EAT , SAY and DO.
Our world has changed forever from what we have known before this virus hit.
The consequences also, of our poor choices of values, leaders, priorities and socio-cultural interface and several other actions stare at us, unblinking. And more convincingly than the most fiery preaching.
Today, we could learn valuable lessons from the attack and impact of a virus and review, readjust, redefine, refine, reorganize, reorder and reprioritize our lives, narratives and rules of engagement (health, economic, socio-cultural, spiritual, mental, emotional & political responses) that would make our next phase of life here on earth more sustainable in quality and yes, quality or length.
Fear or faith, despair or hope, selfishness or love, confusion or clarity, ignorance or knowledge; deception, denial and delusion or truth.
It’s now OUR call, choice and opportunity to either FREAK OUT or RECALIBRATE our LIVES, STRUCTURES and SYSTEMS individually, locally, regionally and globally.
Our CHALLENGE and OPPORTUNITY.