What Can We Learn From Living Through a World Pandemic?

Photo by Giacomo Carra on Unsplash

Liminal Space

For most of us in the world today, our normal lives have come to an end. We are collectively experiencing something unique. It’s as if our world has stopped spinning and we are in this liminal space, “…the time between the ‘what was’ and the ‘next.’” A liminal space is often uncomfortable because we have lost the moorings of normality.

Those of us who continue to follow the advice to stay at home to avoid being infected with Covid-19 have found that everything in our busy lives that kept us running and doing and planning has come to a screeching halt.

Our usual daily routines are gone. The things we must do, we can no longer do in the usual way. There are many things we can no longer do at all. So what should we do to make the most of this suspension of normality? For myself, I don’t want to waste this time in a blur of binge watching Netflix.

Rumi, who lived from 1207–1273, was a poet and a philosopher. Although he lived 753 years ago in a different culture, his work is as relevant to us today as it was to his contemporaries.

Self Discovery

This liminal space can be a place of self discovery. We can take stock of our lives, we can stop and think about who we are and what we are doing.

Rumi urges us to do just this, saying: “And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?”

What better time than now? Usually, we are too busy for a deep dive into our thought processes, emotions, or questions about the purpose of our existence and about just who and what we are.

Perhaps this is the best use we can make of the this pause in time. If so, then, how do we go about this journey into our own soul?

Most of us have probably spent way too much time thinking about what we should do, about what we want to do, about things we regret having done, or about things we have left undone.

We may have been asking ourselves and the universe what life is all about, not just for ourselves, but for everyone? You may have wondered what your place in this world is.