Monday 1 June 2020

How SIGNIFICANT is this covid crisis?


I have just had the chance to take a look at the recently released e-book "Significance" by Paul Hannam.  This is an excellent articulation of the steps you can take to choose a life of significance. 


If you are interested in Paul Hannam’s work, as an internationally renowned author, life-coach and our very own local sustainability leader, then do please visit his web page.  Paul’s E-book is available for download.  A free of charge promotion will run between 2nd and 4th June only, so make sure you get your own Kindle version.


Viviane Doussy, my wife, has done a short article about what this book can tell us as we emerge from the COVID-19 crisis - I have reproduced this as a guest blog below:

 


The Covid-19 virus is raging into our lives, an uninvited guest.  Here to linger.  Here to stay and become part of us – forever.


We claim we’ve not had time to prepare yet scientists have warned us: viruses like these have been sitting on our doorstep for decades.  We’ve chosen to ignore that, and instead busied ourselves with parties and shopping and celebrity culture.  We’ve been kids, naively continuing to play our part in growing the economy, getting more, bigger and better stuff than any past generation.  The media of course has not been an innocent bystander, and their vested interests are at play too.


In our adolescent state, this version of the corona virus has come to us as a rather unpleasant surprise.  Virtually overnight it’s turned our worlds upside down.  Suddenly we’ve had to mature and come to terms with realising that it is all of our own doing.  It is our destruction of natural habitats plus all its life-forms and our abusive exploitation of animals that has opened the door to let the virus in.  Our natural environment is so badly broken.  Our whole world is so badly broken.  We are now feeling all of that immense tragic human and personal loss; the consequences of one small virus.  Covid is significant in its impact.  It has become a keystone species and the driver of human evolution on a global scale.


The world is slowly re-awakening, re-aligning itself after a brief pause for breath from all our damaging human interventions.  It is with a deep sigh of relief that the earth is hopeful that we humans can start seeing the magnitude of what needs undoing.  


We need a whole earth-systems rebuild to provide a thriving home for everyone and everything. This means a re-write of the legislation, media, transport, food, economy and educational functions that will underpin a healthy thriving world and all of its interconnected and regulating systems.  Sounds idealistic?  Yes, it’s achievable and necessary for survival too!  Humanity is finally set on a mature and honest pathway looking forward from the covid lockdown.  We all have a part to play in re-imagining a new world.  


I recently read a small book called “SIGNIFICANCE”.  Yet like covid, small does not mean insignificant.  Greta Thunberg, Sweden’s young climate activist, taught us that no one is too small to make a difference.  This book is significant in that it is an inspiration for change, a short and easy guide for each of us to become more significant; to step up and make a significant difference in this mis-aligned covid-infected world.  This book offers so many nuggets and take-home messages, so many quotes that will resonate.  There is a call to action: first to heal and re-align your inner self, then moving outwards in your circle of influence to engage in this conversation and a positive forward movement.  Only you set your own limits to re-imagining a fresh new future.  Become SIGNIFICANT and refocus your life on what matters most.