Let’s do this well together!

“Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” Matthew Chapter 6 verse 33.

There is one thing which I very much hope will be killed off by the COVID-19 crisis and that is the cult of ‘celebrity’.

Have you noticed the drop off in the media of headlines telling us which famous footballer’s girlfriend has fallen out with his team-mate’s wife, and which Kardashian has bought a new house. The current crisis has even pushed the Harry and Megan updates out of the way, thank goodness! Were our lives before this so devoid of colour and excitement that we needed to live vicariously through celebrities?

I hope we also see the death of reality television programmes. I recall the very earliest ‘fly on the wall’ tv programmes which were meant to broaden our awareness of how other people lived their lives. They were a kind of sociological experiment as society diversified in the mid twentieth century, but over time they have become voyeuristic and cruel.

Just reading Facebook these days reveals attitudes and opinions from some Facebook friends that surprises me. Overnight, people have become experts on the actual virus or on the way the Government should be dealing with it. I never knew I had so many medical experts, financial whizz kids and organisational gurus amongst my acquaintance! And then there are the people I had expected would have sent me a text by now to see how things are going, and those who have been in touch who completely surprised me by their concern. By the end of this, we will all know who really cares about us. That makes me very aware of the need to stay in touch with people who expect to hear from ME. I really don’t want to reach the end of this crisis and have someone say “I didn’t even get a text from you, asking how I was coping.” That’s another list to make then!

And what will this crisis teach me about myself? As the months pass, we will each learn more about our capacity to endure trying circumstances, about our compassion towards others, about our ingenuity in coping with scarce resources, about being patient……and much more.

This is our new reality and it applies to each one of us, even so called celebrities.