We can spend our time worrying, feeling grief, frustration, anger, and resentment over the pain that the Covid-19 crisis is causing on an emotional, financial, and physical level like so many people are. We can worry about having lost our jobs or our income, about the chance that we or someone we love will contract the virus, about our claustrophobia and loneliness, and we can curse the world and say, "Why? Why now? Why us? Why is this happnening?"
Or we can take a big, deep breath and take all of those lower vibrational emotional reactions and set them aside. We can know that everything is working out exactly as its supposed to. We can be excited about the potential and the opportunities that will be coming. We can be thrilled when we open our hearts and minds to the possibility of a paradigm shift!
That's what I'm excited about.
Do you remember when you used to play freeze tag with your friends in grade school? As you were running about, trying to avoid the person who was IT, you might have noticed that your shoe was untied. What did you do? You yelled, "Time out!" and everyone stopped running for a moment as you reached down and tied your shoe. As soon as you were ready, the game resumed as though it had never been paused. Unfortunately, as you entered the world of adulthood, you noticed that didn't work anymore. The real world didn't call time out. It didn't pause and let you handle your responsibilities. The world just kept on going like a force of nature. You either kept up or were left behind.
In the real world, I personally own eight rental properties. This is left over from my 3D pursuit of "freedom" from working a full-time job. In one of my few life decisions based purely on money, I decided it would be a wise idea to invest in real estate. I used to own ten, but I've begun selling them off, and was looking forward to potentially selling three more this year in an effort to rid myself of the burden of these physical throwbacks to the days of my pre-awakening decision-making.
They are generally rented by lower-income families and individuals, so they are more likely to work jobs in businesses that have been closed thanks to the pandemic (retail, location-based non-essential businesses.) As a result, I began preparing for the likely loss of rental income that I'll be receiving for the month of April. In so doing, I started calling the banks that hold the mortgages on these properties.
I did this with great cheer, because what I was seeing in the financial world was completely unprecedented. When policies were being created to prevent people from being evicted, I knew I'd have absolutely no worries that I'd be forced to foreclose, file bankruptcy or otherwise suffer financial ruin as a result of this situation.
Why? Because we're saying, "Time Out!" and financial institutions -- and everyone in the world -- has been listening.
When I called the first bank this week, the banker on the other end informed me I was the first landlord to call him. He explained that they had been scrambling to help restaurants and other small businesses who weren't going to be able to pay their loans -- thanks to being shut down. He told me that the bank didn't want to lose those customers, so they had been creating policies to help them survive during this difficult time.
He then went on to say that with the first of the month coming soon, they'd be turning their attention to work with landlords who were in a similar predicament and they'd be happy to call me back as they made decisions. Great news! But, for three of my loans, the banks would automatically withdraw funds from my account to pay the mortgages. With the uncertainty of receiving rent payments next week, I wanted to have the flexibility to not pay my mortgages if I didn't receive the rent.
So I openly stated to this banker, "I need you to cancel my automatic withdrawal so I don't have to pay you this month."
It was almost like he was excited to help me not pay them! He said he'd get on it right away because the withdrawal might happen sooner than later. This was echoed by the other banks, and within 30 minutes, all of my auto-withdrawals were canceled by happy bankers who were overjoyed to call me back to let me know I'd been saved!
What the heck is going on??
I'll tell you. People are excited to break the rules. For hundreds of years now, the free market system has been a force of nature that could not be avoided. If you were in financial trouble, you suffered, and nobody would rescue you. Think of all the homeless people! Has anyone helped them? Not the financial institutions, that's for sure!
But here we are in all new territory, and things are changing -- fast. What we're seeing right now is people caring about people more than they are caring about money. That's what this entire thing has been about. We started social distancing to help those who would die from the disease. Then we realized that those who were put out of work would need to be supported. And those who would otherwise be evicted couldn't be evicted. And then those who would do the evicting couldn't have rent payments lost, and businesses that had to close couldn't lose it all -- just because we didn't want the elderly and health-compromised to die.
A worldwide pandemic. That is a force of nature. And this force of nature is being proven to be more powerful than our economic system.
Just think of the billions of people on this planet who are witnessing this. For the first time ever, people are being shown that we are stronger than the system we've created. That just because it exists doesn't mean we have to die by it.
And if you think about it, capitalism is a system that appeals to our survival fears. This is the system that works the best for our lowest vibrational state of mind and being. We fear being out on the street, so we are motivated to work and provide an income for ourselves and our families.
And here we are in a brand new situation where capitalism absolutely and completely fails us. It's so bad, in fact, that we have to call time out and switch to a socialist system. As I type this, the United States congress is passing a stimulus plan that will give nearly every American citizen a BASIC INCOME. For those who think Bernie Sanders is too extreme -- Bernie doesn't even advocate such a thing!!
But more than one country around the world has already been experimenting with a basic income to see how it works, because we know we'll have to make a paradigm shift at some point in the future, just from automation alone.
In addition to a basic income, all of the people who are now out of work and don't have health insurance will need to be covered if they end up contracting Covid-19 or experience any other health problems -- so we're already seeing a healthcare system being created to cover them. Hmmm... Sounds a lot like Medicare for all, doesn't it?
And so here we are, doing things we've never done before. Opening our minds to the possibilities that we could live in a different world. One where the care of our fellow humans is actually more important than the mighty dollar.
And if we can do that now, what's to stop us from doing it all the time?
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