Today is Saturday. In the rhythm of our week, this is the day where we go to our local market, buy meat and fish from stall holders, get coffee at the coffee bar and chat.

We chat with acquaintances and new people. We chat with stall holders and business owners.

Today we were all processing last weekends power cut and how it affected us in different ways. For some it lasted 12 hours for some 4 days.

Like last weekend the weather is difficult. Today its stormy and heavy rain but people are still making the effort to come and sell, buy and connect. Some people come from around the corner and some people come from further afield.

You would think that with the news and government announcing virus-misery that people would be avoiding each other, hunched over and rushing. But the majority of people take the time to chat, make eye contact and I both heard a lot of laughter and laughed a lot myself. More people are wearing masks – as the government is telling everyone to do – but some are not and it all still works out.

I come away feeling both grounded and elated but most of all deeply deeply grateful. The most incredible thing that I have learned the past 2 years is that however much I like my own company and how anxious I can feel before, during and after socialising, I need people. I can simultaneously find people annoying and wonderful, tiring and inspiring.

Charles Eisenstein has written a nice piece, which resonates with me The Human Family

On my hopeful days I feel similarly to him.

I have a premonition about how the Covid rift in society will heal. The season of storms will end with a whimper. Neither side will admit they were wrong. Instead, everyone will quietly decide it wasn’t that important. Mandates will peter out. People will stop caring who is vaccinated and who isn’t. Already I’m noticing less public panic with each successive announcement of a new Greek-letter Covid variant. It reminds me of the War on Terror. By 2005 people utterly ignored airport loudspeakers blaring “The Department of Homeland Security has set the terror threat level to orange.” Just as the public ceased to be terrified of terrorism (which like Covid was never quite the threat it was trumped up to be) so also will Covid fear fade into the background. Die-hard partisans on one side will say, “It was the vaccines that stopped it.” On the other side they will say, “We finally reached natural herd immunity,” or, “The virus has evolved to be less virulent.” Most people won’t care.

Charles Eisenstein