Seriously people! Eye contact does NOT spread the coronavirus!

Some of our relatives grew up in war time in other countries. My grandfather’s village was stuck between two armies in the Ukraine.

My mom’s side grew up in England during the war.

I wish we had a little more of the indomitable spirit that we used to have, but maybe this is the time to dig a little deeper and find the seed of what might still be there?

Let’s social distance and beat COVID, but I worry that it will beat us before we find our fighting spirit and we lose our sanity and the economy too!

War propaganda is meant for the hearts of the people. I worry that we have much propaganda now but are not discerning what is factual and what is simply fear? We need to be careful because fear has a weird energy around it but it ends up losing its “sugar high” and sinks us into depression before long. And emotional isolation keeps us bogged down because we no longer have to adapt to the people around us, which leaves us too much time to worry only about ourselves.

What do you mean Corey?

I mean this: Eye contact doesn’t spread COVID, but it does spread HOPE. Hope must replace the currency of Fear or we will lose more than COVID can take from us!

We cannot let this thing destroy the best parts of us as a people. The parts we want our children to remember us for! Cowering in fear and misinformation will teach them to allow circumstance to determine destiny, but the destiny of a people of courage can only be found in crisis!

So I had a decision to make a few weeks ago: deal with reality negatively or positively? I have never in my life seen a negative person deal with reality and win. The best they can do is not realize all their fears. That is called losing.

A positive person takes all the necessary precautions based on science and actual experts and not Aunt so-and-so’s opinion because of what her neighbour thinks, but their entire approach is positive and helpful and long term.

A negative small business owner thinks “I’m done. This thing is impossible to beat. I didn’t prepare and who knows how bad it will get” AND STOPS TRYING, getting angry at those who do.

A positive business owner says “Well, I have time to fix all the things I didn’t do before. I wonder how I can pivot online and deliver my product safely? I’ll bet if I’m first to market and can survive through the next months I’ll get more business in the end?” and immediately looks for those leading the inventing, tweaks for their own product and lets the experiment commence!

I’m choosing joy. I’m choosing to reinvent how I spread that joy. I’m choosing to let nothing stop me from passing hope to the person passing two meters away.

Eye contact cannot spread COVID.

Neither can cheerful words!

This thing must not stop us from living, from laughing!

“Hey! How you guys doing? You keeping safe?” All said with a big smile on my face to every person I passed on my walk this morning.

“What a lovely dog! I love your bike sweetheart! Isn’t the sun nice!”

People’s mood starts to lift. People start realizing the entire human race will not end if it’s cheerfully having to make some adjustments for the next few months.

“You’re not taking this seriously enough!!!” you might say.

That’s not true. I’ve experienced so much fear in my life it might shock you, but I refuse now to let it bow my head. I won’t worship at its altar. I only worship at one, the God whose resurrection forever changed death from the end to the beginning.

There are death moments, but then life springs anew because it always does.

I think fear attracts things I don’t want in my life. My life needs to have healthy fears (like don’t get hit by cars) and the discipline to remove unhealthy fears of misinformation and rampant negative imagination.

Deciding to be cheerful gives me a much better chance of landing on my feet when this is all over. Letting fear defeat me by going backward instead of forward is never the answer.

My lovely wife hid Easter eggs in the front yard Monday morning after the insane amount of work that went into Venue Church’s Easter Drive In (that was organized impossibly in five days by a dedicated team of people who refused to let social distancing stop them from emotionally and spiritually connecting people in our City).

I remember standing out on the front yard while 5 girls (including my wife) ran around looking for Easter eggs.

“I wonder if someone driving by will call us in for HAVING FUN?” Is what I honestly thought to myself, and that made me a little angry.

What we need is a little perspective.

I’ve travelled in places where they deal with far more fear of death every morning they wake up, fear of starvation and disease, fear of terrible and very possible things happening to their daughters. But even the people of the world far less fortunate than we are have learned to smile and make the best of it.

I think we need to feel a bit ashamed when we’re secretly jealous of people who are dealing with the new reality in a more mature way than we are and assume the best about them.

I can feel eyes on my wife and daughters as we walk because we’re so close together. I know it’s a social peer pressure whose claim is “Just trying to be safe!”, but it’s way too easy of a platform for those who take shots from the shadows rather than think logically:

“Hey, maybe all those kids live under the same roof? Maybe I shouldn’t make the dad feel bad for hugging his own girls and goofing around when it’s not making them unsafe?”

My wife and I get a lot closer than that ya’ll. But whatever we go through we go through together.

“In good times and bad. In sorrow and laughter. In sickness and in health. Til death do us part.”

It just means something deeper now…

So I’m going to spread hope. I’m going to smile more. I’m going to laugh and chatter and wave.

This is not going to beat me because I’m better that this.

And maybe more importantly, I won’t let it beat you either because I believe in a better you too.

Relax. There is an opportunity wrapped in a crisis and I believe with all my heart we will win.

Fight fear. Spread hope. Laugh more.