We are living in unprecedented times in a world marked by the restrictions imposed to slow down the spread of the Coronavirus causing Covid19 to hopefully lessen the burden of a challenged world’s health care system. We are accustomed to a life deeply rooted in attachment organized around our dependency on the permanence of a person’s presence or an object’s continued availability to produce and sustain our safety, happiness and wellbeing. 

Because all things are impermanent, loosing what we are attached to – and therefore the perceived happiness, safety and wellbeing they provide – is inevitable. Our normal reaction to when that happens is what we call grief. 

Like never before we are being deprived of massive amounts of things we rely on for our normal lives as the economy and what it fuels comes to a halt. Social distancing and travel restrictions render us unable to access ways of interacting with others, particularly from a physical standpoint. These losses, whether transitory or permanent, are happening at the same time to all of us in the entire world. We are, without a doubt, at the base of an unprecedented episode of global grief. 

In the years to come we will witness if the pre-existing understanding of the grieving process is applicable and useful in such global scale. If so, just as a new self emerges in a griever after an important loss, a new world identity may be forged based on our true essence and a strong connection with the universe we are part of.