When we hit rock bottom, we start to hear the questions we’d never allowed ourselves to ask. And we decide to finally say them out loud.
If healthcare costs for Covid 19 treatment is waived, why do we have to pay for cancer treatment, or any other healthcare costs at all?
If vote by mail is implemented because of Covid 19, making it easier for all of us to vote, why shouldn’t we do vote by mail in every election?
If Amazon or WalMart or other slave labor should suddenly provide their workers with paid sick leave, protective gear, and a liveable wage (because we now realize that how they are treated affects ALL OF US), why shouldn’t all employers have to offer paid sick leave and liveable wages?
If we didn’t like our work, our lives, or our ways of being before, but didn’t change because we were too afraid of what would happen if we did, why did life require a pandemic to force us to think (and FEEL) about that?
Because we weren’t listening, too busy with distraction to hear our own voices.
As I sit here watching the birds taking off, and the trees in the breeze, and the clouds slowly moving across the sun; despite the crazy, despite the death, despite the pain, despite the fear; why do I hear them whisper that this is the best thing that could have happened to the world?
Because the terrifying, unpredictable, beautiful Unknown, in all it’s glorious potential for change, is better than the sleeping numbness of the same old predictable known.
Spring is here, time to wake up.
Lia Wilbourn 