Gen C

I am Gen C

I love this world - this world of inconsistencies and contradictions. This world with its contractions and expansions, its daily recital that challenges us, inspires us. This world that we sometimes hate. This world of wanting and having and loving and dreaming. This world that causes us … to be.

We journey together through an in-between time. What was our known life was torn away from us in a brief second. It is a time of pandemic. An insidious pandemic that threatens not only our personal existence, but also the communal existence of our global community. This pandemic that shoots its arrows at us, cloaked in its invisibility, seeding us with painful depths of emotion, despair and physical longing. But this pandemic has also charged us with the challenges of what hope can look like in this midst of physical and emotional isolation, disrupted lifestyles and financial destruction. What do we want, what do we need?

We ask ourselves, over and over: Truly, who are we – as individuals, as a collective humanity? What will our history be? What will this world become? What will we contribute? What will be our legacy? Do we see obstacles or advantages? I have no simple answer, for I cannot divine the future. But my journey leads me through this bewildering narrative of life that will not end in despair. My choice is hope. I will persevere and defeat will not be my personal trainer.

I love this world, this world that reminds me that I am both vulnerable and precious. This world that agonizingly struggles with survival within all its inequalities. This world that strives to find answers to questions we thought we would never ask. This world that yearns for the day when intimate hugs and faces with smiles will no longer be hidden behind a pandemic curtain. This world that makes me question whether I have only this lifetime or many lifetimes.

This world is unfair. And I hope every day for a world where everyone needs everyone else. Perhaps this pandemic will be the catalyst to make the rich tear down their fences and get together with the poor. Perhaps the fed will feed the hungry. Perhaps the boundaries of nations will get torn down. Perhaps all the colors of our skin, and all our differing abilities will be celebrated. This world in which nothing is certain and there is so much to learn.

I want to be fully here. The beautiful and the ugly intertwined. I want to be in the future, pouring out  kindness, compassion and love to everyone. To be not only in this body, in this world, in this time and place, but to radiate forward into a future that will be better than before the cocoon of pandemic isolation, better than the person I could ever imagine to be. To spread my wings and embrace the birth of a new world where time and equal place and hugs and unmasked faces will again fully expose the beauty of our true humanity.

I love this world. I am Gen C.

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