I am coming across the “corona panic” everywhere. Initially, I wanted to write an informative newsletter that clarifies things. There are enough of those, so I decided to write something else.

Neither conspiracy theories nor angst scenarios sufficiently interest me to permeate my life.

So instead, I would like to talk about bravery and about trust. I want to talk about the trust we have in an unknown future. Our entire lives, we are accompanied by the trust we hold in our future. None of us know our future. All we know are the plans we make for it.

The corona facts: There is this new disease, that we can’t evaluate appropriately. To be able to withstand this unpredictability, we make plans based on scenarios that we already know. All we know in the end, is that we don’t know. So we willingly assume the worst. We follow our evolutionary protection systems that, so far, have let our species survive. In the end, we experience incredible stress before anything has happened and this effectively weakens our immune system.

What we forget is that 86% of people who carry the virus are without or little symptoms. In other words: They are doing well!

We hear about the death rate and forget that daily, many more people die from hunger than the coronavirus. Does that matter to us? Probably but it doesn’t affect us because we’re not hungry, so we don’t have to take action.

Back to the remaining 14% of patients with more severe symptoms. Most of them recover. Only a few die - they and their families have my sympathy.

Death is a part of life and if we thought about how finite our life is more often, maybe we would make some different choices. However, most people chose to live their lives as if they were invincible.

Maybe the coronavirus is a good opportunity to remember what is truly important to us. A reminder to make better decisions about our diet and consumer behavior. Because in the end, most people are likely to survive the virus but the fear of it does a lot of damage. The act of hoarding shows me, how egocentric our society is. One man posted about having stored enough to survive for one year. Conversely, this means that others are not getting anything because they didn’t plan ahead for one year. Other than the fact the this man’s reaction blows things out of proportion, I think his behavior is a result of this man's fear, which he tries to balance.

We never have everything under control and if we were aware of that, we would know how brave are for getting out of bed every day to face our lives. This courage lets us walk the earth with open eyes, no matter what it offers in return. We have to trust that we survive the day. How many more of these days each of us will have, none of us can know. ...ever. And the more we try to predict the future, the more scared we get because what if it comes differently?

A foreseeable future also has the effect of creating a limited and more negative future. A future that would be better if we imagined it this way. Our thoughts create our reality - as profane as this sentence may sound in the face of corona, it remains true. Because our immune systems work better when we sleep enough, spend enough time outside, eat reasonably, do things we enjoy, and trust in our lives. This is far from trivialising or downplaying the situation. It’s simply a force we shouldn’t neglect while there are so many things we can’t predict. Our immune system has the ability to deal with new challenges and it will do so this time as well.

The Dalai Lama once said: Those who worry, suffer twice.

This quote is true and to attentively and thoroughly weigh the risks is different from consistently worrying about things that haven’t happened. Consequently, I hope that we can find ways to nourish our bravery and trust in a such a way that prepares us if we do have to battle a more severe course of the disease.

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Violetta and the Stork - a story about resilience and going out of one's comfort zone.

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Our thoughts create our reality

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