When the World is Breaking

Its a morning like every other morning and also unlike every other. I am writing, of course, as usual. A cool sea breezes blows, stirring the chimes. A tailor bird sings in the almond tree.

I am writing a novel, and far removed from this day. I am deep in another world, feeling my character’s emotions, seeing her sights. Her world is breaking down and I am making it worse to deepen the story. I will strip her down to her bare essentials and watch her struggle to survive.

She thinks she might not survive but I know she will, because I have already written the ending.

Then, I take a break. I come back, withdrawing from that full immersion. I expect to come back to a room full of books and make a cup of coffee before going back to her struggles.

But.

Now its me, not her. What happened? Is this another novel? This real world too is breaking down. The Chinese virus has locked us down. The whole world.

Mother nature has stripped us right down to the bare essentials. Were we too destructive? Now, she has reduced us to the basics – food and survival. She’s taken everything else, locked us up and left us with only what is in our head and our hearts.

It’s become about the quietude of life instead of the stressful running-like-mad-and-getting-nowhere. Now its the blue sky above and your own thoughts within. Everything we took for granted is gone. 

You dont get what is important, she is saying, fine lets make sure you do.

She did.

What will be the new normal? What world will it be when she lets us limp back to some kind of society again?

In my novel, as all novels need to do,  I took my heroine back to nothing so that she could pull out strength and courage from within. But I know she will survive.

Will I? Will you? Will our way of life? Will our world as we knew it, survive?

If mother earth has already written this ending, she hasn’t told us and we can only find out the hard way. Will we dig deep within and find ourselves now that we have been thrown into the fire? Or will we whine all the way to the end of the world?