Click and Collect

I went to the shops at the weekend to pick up a Click and Collect order from Dunelm - super exciting start to this article eh?

And now I’m concerned. I’m more concerned than I was during lockdown. I’m concerned that the new normal will be very much like the old normal.

The car parks were full, with more people arriving, and I wondered if all the talk of the new normal being better was just talk. Of course, I see the irony in the fact that I would not have witnessed this if I hadn’t been at the shops myself! This isn’t a judgement of the individuals there, I have no idea of their motivations or their views on what the new normal should look like, just as they have no idea of mine. However, it jarred. My intuition was telling me we’re missing a great opportunity.

I’ve seen enough to be hopeful though.

We had people singing from their balconies, cheering for the NHS and asking their neighbours what they need. Over 750,000 people signed up in four days to help the NHS. These acts come from compassion not fear. We could say they come from a higher state of consciousness - one that is more interconnected with the world around us. It’s no surprise to me that as these wonderful things were happening we were also talking about not wanting to go back to how things were before - flights cheaper than the train ticket to the airport, busy polluted streets, rampant consumerism and KFC and McDonalds litter in the streets.

It said something about how we are as a nation at our best - that when times are tough we rally round and look after one another. Actually this is not a national thing - that’s an artificial boundary - I believe that’s who we all really are when we come from a place of love not fear. When we look outside of ourselves, when we put our attention on other people with compassion, our fear drops away and our empathy and love for our fellow human beings comes to the fore. From that interconnected place we also see the damage we are doing to the planet - plastic in every corner of our oceans, greenhouse gasses heating the planet, and, as I saw the other day, huge lakes of toxic sludge in China from mining for minerals for tech products.

People have been suffering during lockdown including the stress at being cooped up, overwhelm from home schooling kids while working from home, financial concerns, job losses, relationship breakdowns, loneliness and isolation. It’s vital therefore that we get the economy moving and tread the fine line between protecting people from Covid-19 and “protecting” people from a life half-lived.

How do you want the new normal to look?

Continuous growth that uses the Earth’s resources at a rate that far exceeds her ability to replenish is madness. We bury our heads in the sand to avoid the reality of what we are doing. My hope is the uplift in our collective consciousness is sustained and our economic recovery is guided by a fundamentally different set of principles.

During lockdown I had a visceral sense of Mother Earth breathing a sigh of relief. But she’s still on a ventilator.

Jon

#100daysofcreation #newnormal #sustainability #leadership #coaching

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This article is part of 100 Days of Creation, my challenge to myself to write 100 articles in 140 days, each taking no longer than 30 minutes to write and publish.