Quarantini: glass half full

 "I'll have an extra-strong quarantini on the rocks please, with a drop of self-pity and a dash of 'how the fxck is this happening' ".

That seems to be the general consensus regarding this recipe for disaster, but what if this is exactly what the doctor ordered and we just missed the memo or quite frankly, just didn't read it?

Metaphors aside, this is a deeply saddening and uncertain time. Before going any further, I wanted to take the opportunity to note I understand the seriousness of this situation and I extend my greatest sympathies to those who have suffered loss at the hands of this virus. I don't want this piece to be confused as being trivial, it is simply a little something I put together to help me process the part this plays in my life and maybe yours too.

During my 21 years on this planet, particularly in the last few, there's a couple of things I've come to think about the Universe. Firstly, ask and you shall receive. And secondly, everything happens in divine timing. There's a bunch more too but I'm not gonna go full Virgo on you today. 

They all overlap and intertwine, as life tends to do, so instead of explaining them separately I'm gonna tell you a little story about an annoyingly oversharing girl named Enya and hopefully, it'll make sense after. It all started a couple of years ago when I read the book 'The Secret' by Rhonda Byrne and learned the concept of the law of attraction and how we have the power to create our own lives regardless of what may look "realistically" in our reach. This marked the beginning of a totally different life for me, free from restrictions and full of opportunities. I realise how insane the law of attraction sounds for someone who has never intentionally used it but believe me it works. I have attracted situations and opportunities into my life that are so uncannily similar to what I was attempting to manifest, I have no choice but to believe it works. A good example of this was when I was getting my latest tattoo. It was right before Christmas, I was working in an unpaid internship at the time with no income and any of the few cents I did have were either going towards Christmas presents or a contribution to the charity case known as my life. The tattoo was €80 and quite frankly, I couldn't afford it but it had been on my agenda for over a year and I decided enough was enough, it was time to make it happen. So I booked the tattoo appointment and decided to ask the universe to send me the money to make it happen. Now bear in mind, this post isn't all about the law of attraction and how it works which is why I'm skimming through these details. There's much more to it than simply hollering into thin air whatever it is you're looking for and bingo, but I will discuss that in a later post. For now, all you need to know is coming up to this tattoo, I just kept telling myself the Universe was gonna send me enough money to cover everything. So anyway, fast forward to the day of the tattoo. I'm riding the bus into the city for my appointment and I get an email from a job I worked a couple of hours part-time for early in the year, it was a receipt of holiday pay I had been awarded: €80 to be exact. Coincidence? I think not. That's another thing about the Universe, as far as I'm concerned coincidences do not exist. If you think something's connected, then it probably is. Even writing this, I was skimming through Instagram stories and I happened to click into a live-stream of a tarot reading that, and I quote, was in the middle of saying "you may have lost a job or something, but you just gotta keep picking the grapes and keeping going. It's going to lead you to a much better outcome than before" and if you get to the end of this blog, you will see that one sentence pretty much sums up everything I'm trying to say. Open your eyes and ears to what it's in front of you, the Universe sends us messages in multiple different ways, we just have to be open to receiving them. 

Okay, so now that we've established you attract everything into your life, then how is it I and the rest of the world attracted a global pandemic? Before I get into it, let me give some context on how the coronavirus has affected me. Not-so-fun fact: I'm actually meant to be in Santorini, Greece right now. Technically I'm an Erasmus student studying at The University of Malta until June 30th and living in Malta but in reality, I'm in my bedroom in Ireland attending lectures from behind a laptop screen. The 5 month Erasmus experience I'd been looking forward to since before I ever even set foot in UL, lasted under 6 weeks. During that time, I met some amazing people from every corner of the world and had begun forming friendships that unfortunately were cut short too soon. The Erasmus to-do list I had been working on for months in advance, didn't even get half completed, not a mind the list of other countries I had planned to see. Our Venice trip was the first to be cancelled, then came Cyprus, then Greece. We were in the middle of planning Sicily, Slovenia and more of Italy, but needless to say, that's all now a distant memory too. 

So yes, I have lost out on a lot but in a roundabout way, I've gained a lot too. This is where divine timing comes in. The thing is 'time' doesn't really exist, it's a social construct we use to make life more tangible. Particularly, in the fields of spirituality and energy, time does not exist. If you ever go to a medium or listen to tarot readings, you will hear the phrase "time is fluid" echoed a lot. In this context, usually what it means is whatever said thing, can happen at any given time. Take me, for example, if you dwindle Erasmus down to its basic meaning, its real value to me is travel and meeting new people. Although I will not get the opportunity to do 'Erasmus' again, this doesn't mean the Universe has ignored my wish for travel and meeting new people, it just means now is not the right time. For all I know, I may have already successfully attracted that experience into my life but since time is fluid, it just hasn't come into fruition yet. I guess you could think of it as a food order. You place your order to the Universe and you know by completing that action that the Universe has received it and will get it back to you when it's finished cooking. It just so happens with the laws of time and the Universe, that some things can take minutes to cook while others take years! But that's not reason enough, to wish time away. In fact, I think maybe 'time' is the whole reason I and perhaps we are in this predicament.

You see, amongst many of the things I am trying to attract into my life, there is a commonality between them which is the time to actually carry them out and often, the lack thereof. Hardly surprising at this stage but I am one of them bullet journal chicks. One of the pages I keep is my 'Goals' for the year. Despite the serious tone of the word 'Goal' the truth is, the majority of my goals are not shoot-for-the-stars-world-domination-esque but rather, extremely doable things. They're passions of mine like reading, drawing and painting that I just lost touch with over the years as I got caught up with other things. Another truth is they've been on my Goal list for years but constantly get pushed to the bottom as other more urgent things take priority, using up all my time.

Do you see where I'm going with all of this? I asked the Universe to give me the time to do these things and here it is, not exactly the way I planned it but here, nonetheless. "The world works in mysterious ways" is a phrase we throw around a lot without really stopping to think what it means but there is so much truth to it. I mean how do you explain all the people who happened to sleep through their alarms the morning of 9/11 saving their lives? Or something as simple as me receiving € 80 holiday-pay when that was the exact amount I was waiting for? The Universe is listening. All you have to do is ask for whatever you desire and you will be amazed in the ways it manifests.

I guess for me, it turns out that this wasn't the right time for travel and friendships but apparently, it's finally the right time to start spending mine on the things I love so the Universe created time for me. So after I cried and cursed the world, you know what I did? I ordered paints, borrowed books and finally took up the fitness routine I've been putting off for years.

Being stuck at home doesn't have to be a waste of time, in fact it should be seen as a gift of time. Apply yourself. Everyone has goal lists, it doesn't have to be in a journal like mine, it could be scribbled in the back of a notebook, in the memo of your phone or even mentally. But everyone has things they want to do. It might even be simply rewatching your favourite TV show. Just do it. And stop finding excuses for yourself. Not having weights isn't enough reason to put off working out- find a great no-equipment routine on Youtube or even better; get creative with it, fill a bag with cans and make them your weights. Do what you can with what you have or what you can afford. Half doing something is better than not doing it at all.

For some, you may be in a money deficit but you're in a time surplus and quite frankly, a decision surplus too. I once listened to a Ted Talk discussing the concept of 'decision fatigue'. Did you know that the average person makes about 35,000 decisions every day? What to wear? What to eat for breakfast? What to bring for lunch? - these are just to name a few, so it's hardly surprising we would get tired from it. This is why people like Mark Zuckerburg, Barack O'Bama and Steve Jobs wear the same things every day because it's one less decision to make. They would rather save their decisions for things that really matter.

We are now blessed in an unusual situation where a large percentage of the things we usually have to make decisions around, have been taken away from us. No work or college means no need to worry about whether to wear your hair straight or curly or whether to go to the gym after work or whether to bring lunch or buy it. The field over which our decision making resides has been cut back, creating space and energy for things that were once forgotten. We can now think things like: will I do my workout this morning or will I do my artwork? 

You see, I have a suspicion that this isocation we currently find ourselves in is a product of a combination of these laws and more. In fact, I think it may even be a product of its own law. We were given free will- our own brains, limbs, voice- to do as we please. But what if, just like a mother intervenes from time to time with fighting children, some higher power was sick of banging their head off the wall waiting for us to cop on and decided enough was enough. What if something bigger than us stopped us and the world in our tracks to teach us a lesson? The law of intervention perhaps?

Since before I was even born, there have been people preaching about the impending consequences of climate change and global warming, pleading with society and individuals alike to make the necessary changes to stop this before it's too late. Today, more information and campaigns exist surrounding climate change, than any other time in history. This, alongside the fact climate change, has started to hit closer to home with things like the polar vortex in Chicago last year and most recently the Australian bushfires would make you think people would start taking this phenomenon more seriously, but has it? Unfortunately, for the majority of countries, it's really made no difference.

It seems to me that maybe these events amongst many other global instances of climate change were the first few strikes. They were our wake up calls but unfortunately, we snoozed through them. So the Universe had no other choice but to blow the whistle and call a time out. And look at what has happened? Countries across the globe are experiencing drops in the levels of carbon dioxide and nitrogen by as much as 40%, wildlife are appearing in places they haven't in years such as coyotes being spotted on the Golden Gate Bridge and deer near Washington homes, air traffic has halved and so much more. 

In what feels like a crucial turning point in the battle against climate change, I can't help but wonder if this virus is somehow connected? Activists pleas to governments to find new alternatives to reduce carbon emissions have been met to no avail. Now suddenly when there are no other options but to stay at home, work has moved, in many cases, smoothly to online forums like zoom, proving that not every car on the road to work is necessary. In the UK the head of the Automobile Association has advised the government to switch infrastructure investment from building new roads to widening internet bandwidth to accommodate to this new work lifestyle. These measures are seen as somewhat temporary fixes but maybe they shouldn't be. Maybe instead of focusing on getting back to our old habits, we should be aiming to bring these new habits with us.