Make haste slowly

In spite of our best efforts, Covid-19 has continued to ravage our lives. This has plunged us all into a state of fear and confusion. Most of us are prisoners in our houses. We are afraid to go out, talk to and mingle with others. We are suspicious of anything handled by others and have embraced isolation as the only way of staying safe.

It is no wonder that we have traded in our better and kinder beliefs about life for cynicism and bitterness. We are quick to pick up doomsday predictions and, in the process, have lost courage and faith. Caught in a state of mental paralysis, we find it more difficult than ever before to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. What philosophy after all can the agitated mind cling to when the future seems empty or at the best bleak?

We can attribute all catastrophes to fate or to an uncaring providence. However, by doing so, we erase largely from our thinking the incriminating role we have played in this sorry state of affairs. It is possible to even now to make amends.

It is generally acknowledged that the human is the highest form of animal. We have been given extraordinary gifts. Chief among them are insight, imagination and inventiveness. They have enabled us to make life better for ourselves. We can speak, write and organise complex activities and we have achieved all this in a stunningly short period of time. Scientists have pointed out that we have existed only for about .0001% of Earth’s history.

Yet not all our actions have reflected either prudence or wisdom. We have caused the extinction of many hundreds of animals. A United Nations report put the total number of extinctions in the last 400 years at almost 1,000. We have polluted the air and poisoned all waterways. Our nuclear arsenal can destroy the Earth many times over. What is worse, we are unleashing dangerous life-forms that can wipe us out completely. We are blind to our shortcomings and step into areas that ‘angels fear to tread’. It is time to choose the path of sanity and act with faith and humility. The need of the hour is to ‘make haste slowly’.