The Great PAUSE…
Sunrise looking over Moreton Bay in. Queensland. Image by DOUG FLOCKHART
What is happening to humanity at the moment is genuinely incredible. What??? you might be thinking.
Maybe, it’s the greatest gift ever unwrapped. Not the deaths, not the virus, not the financial stress, but the opportunity to ‘PAUSE’.
Maybe this crisis has given us (humanity) a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see ourselves and our country, in the plainest of views. Never in our lifetime, have we gotten the opportunity to see what would happen if the world simply stopped. Well here it is, a lived experience ‘in play’ of just that.
If we want to create a better Australia, a better place for our kids, and if we want to make sure we’re sustainable into the future, maybe this is the opportunity right now.
To make our lives work, we’ve been out there hustling – i.e. to meet our goals/KPI’s, attend meetings, pay the bills, live up to other’s expectations, all while our mobile phones often take ‘the primary place.’ At the same time, we’ve enjoyed and participated in the seduction of consumerism.
However, whilst this has been playing out, there are problems we ignore every day. Not because we’re dreadful people or because we’re not willing or interested when it comes to fixing them, but often because we can’t stop or we don’t have time. YES – Time!
I don’t really believe humanity doesn’t care about the environment for example. We do care, but most of us don’t have the time to do anything about it or to focus on it. Is that just me, or maybe it’s you, too?
Well, the treadmill you/we’ve been on (that’s been decades in the making) just stopped.
BOOM!
And that feeling you have right now, maybe it’s the same as having just broken down in your car at night 30 klms from nowhere, and you’re on your own. Part way into that last part of the journey, you might be thinking - what just happened?
From me to you, I respectfully implore of you… Take a deep breath, ignore the deafening noise that was, and think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. In essence - we now get to Marie Kondo the shit out of everything that was.
This is our chance as individuals and humanity, to define a new version of normal, a rare opportunity to get rid of the bullshit and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us genuinely invested and proud.
We care deeply about one another, that is a given. That can be seen in every supportive Facebook post, in every meal dropped off for a neighbour, in every Zoom birthday party, for example.
We are by design good people - so as a good people, do we not want to define (on our own terms) what our lives and Australia looks like in 5, 10 or 50 years. Is this not our chance to do that, the biggest opportunity we’ve ever had, and probably the best one we’ll ever get?
For decades, the multibillion-dollar advertising business has operated based on this cardinal principle: Find the consumers problem and share your solution via a product/service. I.E. Sell you something. You want the feeling of comfortable routine, and we probably all want it.
As Australia looks towards the future, and a re-start (yep, the sign that says we’re open for life/business) - hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent on advertising, to share a rosy picture of life. This will be delivered in traditional forms and new-media forms. I.E. a 2020–2021 generation of memes to remind you that what you want again is comfortable normalcy.
We get to NOW choose what we can do on a personal scale in our homes, in how we choose to spend our family time on nights and weekends, what we watch, what we listen to, what we eat, and what we choose to spend our dollars on, when, and where.
We get to NOW choose what we do locally in our communities, organizations we support, what truths we tell, and what events we attend.
We get to choose at a state level and federally with our government, which leaders we vote in and to whom we give power.
If we want cleaner air, we can make it happen. If we want to protect civilisation from the next virus, we can make it happen.
If we want us, our neighbours and friends to earn a dignified income, we can make that happen.
And, yes, if we just want to live a simpler life, we can make that happen, too.
But only if we resist the massive re-start phenomenon that is coming our way, that will endeavour to restart your life, exactly from where the BOOM commenced.
Out of adversity comes opportunity, so let’s use this PAUSE to really reset our future!
It’s TIME…
PS… I’ve been writing this listening to ‘This is Billie Eilish’ on Spotify. *****
