Listen above or tune in on Apple Podcasts or Podbean
EPISODE 92 – PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Hi there, welcome back to Kelly Martin Speaks. I’m your host Kelly Martin and this is episode 92.
How are you all doing? I keep thinking, perhaps I should talk about what’s happening in the world right now, maybe it will get boring or old too quickly, but I also feel that so many of us are isolated, we need support in seeing things differently, opening our eyes wide and help in releasing fear and appreciating what is.
Like many, I’ve had my fair share of fear come up around this pandemic, around Covid-19. I have found small pockets of peace on my daily exercise walk around the city, observing new growth in the blossoms on the trees, the new flowers and plants growing through the concrete paths, seeing the blue sky and noticing the quiet all around. I have felt blessed to be able to hear the birds sing more loudly and experience the air as clearer, as people drive vehicles a lot less in the UK. But I have had moments of fear.
This week I was feeling more peaceful, but then something unexpected happened, when the British Prime Minister who has been diagnosed with coronavirus was admitted to hospital and a day later admitted to intensive care. I must admit I felt totally shell shocked, I felt scared, I felt sad and deeply concerned. To me we have a good leader right now, a balance of strength and also light. His positive attitude is so needed right now, so when that positive attitude was taken down by this virus, I think many in the UK and world were worried.
What I saw on social media was an outpouring of love toward our Prime Minister Boris Johnson, even from people who profess deeply different political beliefs and allegiances. We did see a few, a minority of people who are so trapped in fear, projecting it as hate towards him and wishing him ill, but overall people were very loving and supportive.
I watched mainstream media, support him, for one day. Once that day was up, they were back to scare-mongering headlines. I think mainstream media right now, if they were on stage giving a talk, would be the speaker clearly not willing to read the feelings in the room, the room being the world at large.
Mainstream media appears to be driving so much fear at a time when people globally need encouragement, support, morale boosting news. Yes, we need facts, but not tainted by the emotional bias of the journalists. We need love right now, we need calm, we need strength and inspiration.
During war time the media made sure the people were encouraged and morale was boosted, but now? It appears most are too locked into clickbait headlines and fear news.
I feel that so many people are waking up to this and I feel unless they wake up soon, mainstream journalists are finished, but that aside, onto today’s episode.
We Need Love To Survive
Why do we need love? We need it because without love we can’t survive.
As Mother Theresa said:
Love cannot remain by itself – it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action, and that action is service. The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved. If you judge people, you have no time to love them
So what can we do during this scary time, if news media is not supporting us, if news media is scaring us further when we need calm?
We must find the calm ourselves. We need to seek out positive news. We need to listen to those who have gone through similar and find nourishing ways to manage our time and our emotional wellbeing.
Unfortunately, people will die, some will not cope in isolation and this saddens me, but if we spend moments in our day to send out love, to appreciate what someone has done, to focus on what is working in the world without buying into the fear-mongering headlines, we can get through this.
A friend shared this very poignant message on Facebook recently from an Italian author called Francesca Melandri from her novel Eva Sleeps…it is a letter to the UK (but could be equally for anyone worldwide that is affected by this pandemic). It is both moving, encouraging and a reminder to keep the faith and keep going. I hope it helps you during this time.
From Italy – This Is What We Know About Your Future
A letter to the UK from an author in Rome, Italy: this is what we know about your future
I am writing to you from Italy, which means I am writing from your future. We are now where you will be in a few days. The epidemic’s charts show us all entwined in a parallel dance.
We are but a few steps ahead of you in the path of time, just like Wuhan was a few weeks ahead of us.
We watch you as you behave just as we did.
You hold the same arguments we did until a short time ago, between those who still say, “it’s only a flu, why all the fuss?” and those who have already understood.
As we watch you from here, from your future, we know that many of you, as you were told to lock yourselves up into your homes, quoted Orwell, some even Hobbes. But soon you’ll be too busy for that.
First of all, you’ll eat. Not just because it will be one of the few last things that you can still do.
You’ll find dozens of social networking groups with tutorials on how to spend your free time in fruitful ways. You will join them all, then ignore them completely after a few days.
You’ll pull apocalyptic literature out of your bookshelves but will soon find you don’t really feel like reading any of it.
You’ll eat again.
You will not sleep well.
You will ask yourselves what is happening to democracy.
You’ll have an unstoppable online social life – on Messenger, WhatsApp, Skype, Zoom…
You will miss your adult children like you never have before. The realisation that you have no idea when you will ever see them again will hit you like a punch in the chest.
Old resentments and falling-outs will seem irrelevant. You will call people you had sworn never to talk to ever again, so as to ask them: “How are you doing?”
Many women will be beaten in their homes.
You will wonder what is happening to all those who can’t stay home because they don’t have one.
You will feel vulnerable when going out shopping in the deserted streets, especially if you are a woman.
You will ask yourselves if this is how societies collapse. Does it really happen so fast?
You’ll block out these thoughts and when you get back home you’ll eat again.
You will put on weight.
You’ll look for online fitness training.
You’ll laugh. You’ll laugh a lot. You’ll flaunt a gallow’s humour you never had before. Even people who’ve always taken everything dead seriously will contemplate the absurdity of life, of the universe and of it all.
You will make appointments in the supermarket queues with your friends and lovers, so as to briefly see them in person, all the while abiding by the social distancing rules.
You will count all the things you do not need.
The true nature of the people around you will be revealed with total clarity. You will have confirmations and surprises.
Literati who had been omnipresent in the news will disappear; their opinions suddenly irrelevant; some will take refuge in rationalisations which will be so totally lacking in empathy that people will stop listening to them.
People whom you had overlooked, instead, will turn out to be reassuring, generous, reliable, pragmatic and clairvoyant.
Those who invite you to see all this mess as an opportunity for planetary renewal will help you to put things in a larger perspective. You will also find them terribly annoying: nice, the planet is breathing better because of the halved CO2 emissions, but how will you pay your bills next month?
You will not understand if witnessing the birth of a new world is more a grandiose or a miserable affair.
You will play music from your windows and lawns. When you saw us singing opera from our balconies, you thought “ah, those Italians”.
But we know you will sing uplifting songs to each other too. And when you blast ‘I Will Survive’ from your windows, we’ll watch you and nod just like the people of Wuhan, who sung from their windows in February, nodded while watching us.
Many of you will fall asleep vowing that the very first thing you’ll do as soon as lockdown is over is file for divorce.
Many children will be conceived.
Your children will be schooled online. They’ll be horrible nuisances; they’ll give you joy.
Elderly people will disobey you like rowdy teenagers: you’ll have to fight with them in order to forbid them from going out to get infected and die.
You will try not to think about the lonely deaths inside the ICU.
You’ll want to cover with rose petals all medical workers’ steps.
You will be told that society is united in a communal effort, that you are all in the same boat. It will be true.
This experience will change for good how you perceive yourself as an individual part of a larger whole.
Class, however, will make all the difference.
Being locked up in a house with a pretty garden or in an overcrowded housing project will not be the same.
Nor is being able to keep on working from home or seeing your job disappear.
That boat in which you’ll be sailing in order to defeat the epidemic will not look the same to everyone nor is it actually the same for everyone: it never was.
At some point, you will realise it’s tough.
You will be afraid.
You will share your fear with your dear ones, or you will keep it to yourselves so as not to burden them with it too.
You will eat again.
We’re in Italy, and this is what we know about your future. But it’s just small-scale fortune-telling. We are very low-key seers.
If we turn our gaze to the more distant future, the future which is unknown both to you and to us too, we can only tell you this: when all of this is over, the world won’t be the same.
Sending my love from lockdown UK.
Keep safe, stay home and save lives!
Thanks for listening to this episode of Kelly Martin Speaks
If you have a question or topic you are struggling with and would like me to answer on an upcoming podcast episode, please get in touch. Your name will be confidential. EMAIL me at kellymartinspeaks@gmail.com or message me on Facebook via my page Kelly Martin Speaks.
And don’t forget, if you feel that others are passing you by and ‘The Not Good Enough’ voice is screaming loudly, pop by kellymartin.uk to find out all about my books, including Book 1 ‘When Everyone Shines but You’
You can also support my channel via my podcast page on my website kellymartinspeaks.co.uk via Paypal or buy me a coffee via ko-fi.
Until next time…bye for now