Are We Sick of Being Sick Yet?

By Danielle Benvenuto

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

Whenever I think about the state of the world–the story it is telling, the movie it is projecting–in order to understand what is really going on, I view it as one big breathing organism. That is, I see the world as one individual on his or her own life path going through developmental phases, mood swings, crises, going through it all as we as humans on our own individual paths must do in this life to evolve.

So then when I think about the world and some of the pretty horrific acting out that happens from our so called leaders (the “mothers” and “fathers” of our societal families supposedly showing us the way) and the acting out of humanity in general, I think about how old the earth is: billions of years old and how very young we as humans are: only 200,000 years old. And when I think about how young we are compared to the age of our planet, I realize developmentally we are a bunch of teenagers.

We don’t know who we are quite yet. We are learning for the first time how to handle impulses and feelings that run through our growing bodies while having a complex brain that tries to makes sense of it all. We are trying to process the fast pace of a society that is technologically advancing at exponential rates creating both separation and closeness in ways we haven’t experienced yet all the while trying to get a grip on who we are outside of this tsunami of information and possibilities. We are trying to be our own person and at the same time are regressing like children.

We are going through an identity crisis.

If we take a look at advancements in the fields of science and psychology, only now are we only truly beginning to understand the nature of emotional trauma in our bodies and how to heal it with techniques that work with the body, not just the mind. Finally, we are incorporating eastern and western methods of treatment that take into account the whole being from a holistic perspective.

So yes we are teenagers and as we all know, especially those of us who are parents, there is no skipping over phases of development. They are natural,  necessary, and simply part of our biology. Also necessary however is support, tough love boundaries, others who can emotionally contain our experience to help this phase come to completion in an optimal way.

But many of us never got that support. So as parents we become grown up teenagers raising teenagers who are becoming. And this is the state of our world and on one level…it makes sense. We must accept that like an individual human on his or her own path, collectively we are where we are on our path: teenagers growing into adulthood.

That being said, we are a bunch of really stuck teenagers and it’s time we grow up.

We are getting sick. 

The whole world is getting ill and for the first time we are seeing it, feeling it, and experiencing it on a global level through the COVID-19 pandemic.  What’s making us sick?

We are sick of the values our society has created and this generic, infantilizing formula of a good life we are told to accept. We are sick from not questioning those values and formulas. We are sick of being bored living according to someone else’s plan. We are sick of thinking. We are sick of trying to prove ourselves. We are sick of chasing after money, success, fame, and people and things that don’t make us happy. We are sick of working like slaves for a master we don’t know or can’t stand. We are sick of being disconnected from our bodies. We are sick from not going into nature enough. We are sick from hiding and lying to ourselves. We are sick from being lied to. We are sick from judging other humans. We are sick from scapegoating other countries, other leaders, our brothers, our sisters, our parents, our friends. We are sick from drinking our self-judgment. We are sick from the pressure we put on ourselves. We are sick from giving too much and receiving too little. We are sick from taking things too seriously.

When I think about my life and the times I really made a change, it was only when I was wacked in the face with a big wake up call–a crisis, an illness, a depression, you name it. Only when things get bad it seems, is when we truly pay attention to what is calling from inside us. Only when we hit rock bottom do we start to make a change.

Thanks to COVID-19 and a big thanks to ourselves for allowing the opportunity through this pandemic to see very clearly where things are broken, we have given ourselves the chance to wake up.

What are we waking up from exactly? And what are we moving into?

Collectively we are waking up from everything that makes us sick. We have created a world driven primarily from ego, a world created more from our heads than from the union of our minds and bodies. A world driven primarily from ego favors safety, status and the approval of others. This kind of world doesn’t know true happiness depends on moving into the unknown, letting go of old ways, and exploring the inner world.

A culture of ego favors structure, routine, thinking over feeling uncomfortable, staying in a routine over trying new things, and doing instead of simply being. This type of culture says we are not good enough, loveable enough, whatever enough unless we are pretty, handsome, successful, rich, skinny, giving more than receiving, a bestselling author, a famous singer, an Olympic athlete, fill in the blank please.

A world vibing with ego feels being in powerful positions, stealing peoples’ possessions, having the most territory, killing others, having the best ideas, and converting others to its beliefs is the way to feel real good about him or herself.

Now, it is okay to want safety, to want protection, to think, to do, and to desire recognition. The problem is we want this way too much. We are on a one track path to more destruction and need to change gears but NOT by abandoning the ego. We need our egos for basic survival and for the many healthy functions it provides: structure, order, the desire to be “me” separate from “you”, and the vehicle in which we can have and express ideas.

We change gears by having our minds and hearts meet more often; by integrating our body sensations into our thinking minds as a new way of perceiving ourselves and the world so we can truly feel into what will make not only our individual lives but the whole planet live in more harmony.

And what does that look like?

Get ready to feel uncomfortable taking new risks and trying new things. Get ready to start feeling lost and clueless instead of empty, depressed or exhausted. Get ready to go inside and look at yourself, at your fears and all those beliefs you have no clue are operating your life. Get ready to feel like shit sometimes while you are doing this because it doesn’t always feel good at first to go inside yourself and feel your body for the first time with all its sensations and all its stories. But also get ready as a result to start feeling a life force inside you which no drug, pill, food, money, or status can ever give you.

Get ready to start depending on people and feeling vulnerable as fu*k because you have to face all your fears of not being loveable enough. Get ready also to be met by people who are also sharing this same vulnerability as you and then get ready to feel your body unfreeze as you realize someone wants to hear you or help you. Get ready for the pain in your body to leave as you feel into the emotional pain that your body is holding in the form of physical symptoms.

Get ready to experience enlightenment not by some flight into the cosmos leaving your body behind for some union that can’t be integrated into your daily life but by listening to your damn heart and following its callings, by integrating your mind and body into one beautiful whole that has always been one anyway. Get ready to know and feel your body, to feel uncomfortable at first because you have been ignoring it for too long. Get ready after to feel your whole body explode with an incredible aliveness; a force that comes from no other source than you being there with you, expressing yourself as you are.

Get ready to start being more than doing and finding the balance between the two, get ready to stop trying to figure it out all right NOW, to be present for your process instead of madly pursuing some end result. Get ready to have more fun. Get ready to play. Get ready to stop thinking in stereotypes and feel into the fact we are more similar than different. As this judgement is released, get ready to feel a giant space open inside your body for compassion to enter.

Get ready to make a choice. 

It is a choice to feel love. It is a choice to give up making something or someone the reason you exist. It is a choice to live the lives we want to live. It is a choice to be happy.

Once this choice is made, get ready to include others in your plan. We can’t choose love and do it by ourselves. We can’t choose love and then isolate ourselves when we feel vulnerable. We must be there for ourselves and let others helps us do this and then we must extend this same hand when others need help finding their truths.

We are in this together.

We can create any kind of world we want. 

What kind of life do you choose?

About the author:

Danielle Benvenuto is a multi-media artist and writer based in Berlin, Germany. She brings her past work as a psychoanalyst and energy healer into her art and is known for her soul portrait paintings. She offers 75-minute sessions called Life Sessions, which help you manifest a life that is more in tune with what you truly desire. For more, visit her on her website, Instagram, or YouTube Channel.