Dear fam,
I hope this message finds you safe, healthy and happy. At this odd time in history, I think we have an opportunity to make the best of a crisis, so I wanted to share some of my personal thoughts that might help add some perspective to the situation.
At this point we have all been impacted by COVID-19. It has reached its tentacles around the world and has shaken up life as we know it. We’ve seen commentary from each end of the spectrum and everywhere in between from alarmists to conspiracy theorists to “coronavirus deniers.”
How do we make sense of it all?
One obvious fact that we can agree on and must heed is that the virus passes easily and rapidly from person to person. Our health authorities and our vulnerable people have asked us to distance ourselves from each other to reduce potential touch points where the virus can spread. With no other potential solution at hand right now, we as good citizens must pay attention to this and do as our authorities have advised us (and in some cases, enforced).
This is obviously not what any of us want. It is a challenge for every single person around the planet. But these are the times that have selected us to become leaders and socially responsible citizens. Hard times breed hard people, as my friend @therealbrianrose would say.
While we don’t yet have a proven treatment or a vaccine, there are dozens of potential treatments that show promise and a huge push to make a vaccine available as quickly as possible. I do have faith in human ingenuity and the fact that the global community has mustered the willingness to work together to fight a common enemy. This is unprecedented and gives me hope for not only this crisis but for the other crises that we will almost certainly face in the years ahead. Now more than ever, humanity needs to work together to solve the existential threats that continue to pile up and impede our ability to live sustainably and healthfully for centuries to come.
This episode is proving just how quickly our global community can mobilize around a problem when we need to.
In modern history, we’ve never applied the brakes like this to the incredible momentum of our economy or our society. The economy has been a global juggernaut and any effort at slowing it or changing business as usual has been met with impenetrable resistance on the macro and micro scales. And what we’re seeing now is that all it took was the wrong virus bred in the wet markets of Wuhan to pull the emergency brake and shut everything down overnight. Three months ago this would have been unfathomable. Yet here we are.
Momentum is one of the most powerful forces in physics. It’s hard to start and it’s hard to stop, but once it’s moving, it requires a little effort to stay moving. Having put the brakes on our society’s momentum, this now allows us to build momentum where we want to build momentum, with the future in mind. As we start to build momentum again, as humans, as families, as businesses, as colleagues, and as a society, we now have an unprecedented opportunity to start building the momentum of our choosing. Not just doing what has been done in the past, but doing what should be done in the future because we know how momentum works. We know that the momentum we start to build now will be hard to stop in ten years.
I truly hope this economic “reboot” doesn’t last long, for the sake of all of us. Nobody wants to be in this position. Alas, some things just need to be accepted. Once you accept them you can deal with them. So, let us accept the fact that we’re going through a reboot. Let’s hope it doesn’t last long, but let’s not lose this opportunity to reset, and to start using momentum in our favor.
I’ll be half of all of our team here at Soltara I wish you the best possible outcome in all senses of the word. Our sole objective at this point is to be alive and ready for you, and ready to help heal the world , once we come out the other side of this thing.
With much love and heartfelt support, gratitude, and hope, the Soltara family is here for you.
Sincerely,
Daniel Cleland
Founding Partner and CEO
Soltara Healing Center, Costa Rica
