Keeping Our Center ~ Day 89

In May of 1940 when the British seemed all but finished against the vicious and victorious Nazis, Winston Churchill took over the job as Prime Minister. Within two weeks, the United Kingdom was the only country in Europe left standing. Churchill didn’t pull any punches, he didn’t lie or hide behind a smoke screen of clichés and false optimism. Instead, with complete honesty, he told the British people that all he had to offer was his own “blood, toil, tears and sweat,” and rallied them with pride and determination to “never, never, never give up.” Perhaps my favorite quote of his is, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” 

Between the virus and the latest (because this is not new) racial injustices and tension, it sort of feels like we’ve entered a new version of hell where life as we knew it has all but disappeared, and we’re not quite sure when or how we’re going to level out to a new normal. Still, it seems to me that the key is to keep moving forward, one step at a time, just like society has every time life has been thrown into chaos.

Just in the last hundred years or so, the U.S. has had its “normal” disrupted multiple times by World War I, the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, World War II, polio, the Civil Rights Movement, the Equal Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, AIDS, 9/11 (and I probably missed some since history was never my best subject). People went through hell to greater and lesser degrees with all of those, but as a whole we kept going. With resilience, strength and determination, and by helping one another, life continued, stabilized, and eventually flourished once again. Things were different after each event, certainly, but that doesn’t mean life was bad.

No “normal” ever lasts forever. Change is truly the only constant. Sure, we prefer slow change where we can adjust almost imperceptibly, but it just doesn’t always work that way. One day, this too will simply be another marker on a historical timeline. We’ll see this through, just hang on and for heaven’s sake keep going.

Love & Light!

Kaye