Betting on the future.

Dear friends,

Tumultuous times call for spiritual renovation. Only by touching into our personal longings can will we find redemption in this broken world. I´d like to call out to you, dear reader, to take advantage of the current opportunity.

Now is the time to reassess your short-term goals and let go of those which will not be met in the foreseeable future; time to reorient our expectations to avoid frustration– to face, with steadfast calm, the tough challenges that lie ahead.

Our current state of emergency is forcing us to change our personal definitions of happiness. Until fairly recently, we were driven by frenetic consumption habits and other daily impulses. It’s time to distill those needs and separate expendable from life-affirming; we must return to basics and seek fulfillment with the resources at our immediate disposal.

This crisis is an opportunity to learn, to change and evolve, to reimagine the future for those to come.

As both biological and spiritual animals, we must continue supporting our families, yes, but we must also foster the original impetus that moves us to act beyond ourselves. This new, harsh reality has revealed the illusionary nature of habits we once took for granted and revealed our collective vulnerability.  This is why we must go beyond our confinement to strengthen the social bonds that have sustained us until now.

This is an opportunity to be present, to be brave, and to love one another.

So, let us conceive this adversity as a chance to redefine our priorities and reflect on what is really important. As human beings, we have survived worse catastrophes before. Our forefathers survived the Tova volcano or the glacial age with none of the resources and technological capabilities that we today take for granted. Through cooperation, our ancestors made their way through tempests, their grit ensuring our continuity. Humanity will emerge from this crisis renewed and evolved.

Our immediate future is cloudy, but the crisis has already taught us a valuable lesson. We have discovered that the planet is smaller than we thought; that our social, racial, religious differences are figments of our imaginations.

Still, it will be up to us to gain a full perspective on what is happening right now and rebuild better societies and sustain a healthier relationship with our environment. Will we be able to transcend? Will we be able to share our resources so that nobody gets left behind, or will egoistical Social Darwinism prevail? Will we be able to emerge from this with a more profound feeling of responsibility to The Other?

Human beings have always been restless. Our capacity to cooperate was born from this restlessness. We will face this battle and emerge stronger from it. But to do this, we must keep our eyes on the goal. We must be empathetic with strangers,  creative and bold. But above all, we must have faith in the future: our planet is an island—its inhabitants, us humans, are fragile and unbreakable at the same time.