Today, we are living in a new world.  A world that, when thinking about individual feelings and societal emotions, asks us to confront an existential question: will Covid-19 become a living, collective trauma that could end up shaping our lives forever?

Among the new patterns we are experiencing during these uncertain and complex moments there is one phenomenon that seems to have arisen above all others: the importance of duality.

The concept of a compelling “external pressure” to move forward and “do”, in opposition to the internal movement of “staying still” and “waiting”.

Coronavirus is about breathing

We have all experienced crazy years of acceleration. Exponential technology, fast growing companies, real-time social media exposure (and the correlated anxiety that causes). It is difficult to believe that everything has suddenly stopped. From 100 to 0 in just a few weeks, globally.

Let’s breath and slow down. What if we get back to our natural human rhythm?

And yet… Coronavirus is about breathing. Covid-19 is asking us to breath – to find a new, unknown space – and on the other hand it is stopping us from breathing– putting all of us under an unexpected global pressure. Both, at the same time.

What is the unrevealed systemic message unfolding before us?

We are getting ill and dying, we are lost in an atypical confined transition. Fear is all around, paralyzing us. We need oxygen respirators to breathe and we lack the resources and knowledge to save people. But most of all, we lack time. Like in an agonizing paradox, our beloved elderly are the ones being sacrificed… the only ones whose rhythm was already slower.

Our heroic doctors are struggling without any rest, our children need us. We desperately want our companies to survive and “breathe” fresh air, we fight against the economic crisis that is threatening our countries and our lives. We feel the urgency of moving quickly. Speed is everything. A societal and unnatural attempt to break the emptiness we feel inside with exponentiality. Still, the only exponential growth we face every day is the counting of new contagious and dead. The frustration of having lost all our certainties is screaming loud in front of us: we cannot move further than that, not now. Our entire belief system is under attack.

To breath slowly and to speed up at the same time. The odd duality of this new Covid-19 world.

It’s time for a new Collective Intelligence to emerge

What is needed from us? To move and “do” or to “stay still” and wait? Let’s breath and slow down, above all. Let’s recognize the vulnerability of not knowing, of not being able to plan anything anymore in this moment. An immediate relief will follow.

Communities, families, teams and networks of new amazing creativity are flourishing, “breathing” all around us. They move faster than our global leaders. Their songs, applause and gratitude resonate all around. More than ever, we are experiencing in our own skin, the immense value of trust, empathy, connection with others and systemic intelligence. In a world where borders are closed and boundaries stretched to the limit, we feel others for the first time in years. We feel the same fear and loss. We feel the same admiration and are willing to recover. We cry watching the same, heartbreaking images.

We know that we all belong to something bigger and we are staying home to protect it.

We are breathing all together, as a living system. And no speed is needed: we DO have the time now to fully feel it. What if we embrace this opportunity and hold on to that space, allowing the opportunity for a new Collective Intelligence to emerge?

Francesca Gabetti

CEO & Co-Founder

PH: hareesh.org