Silver linings and dark clouds. Funny how rearranging words can make you change your perspective. Yes, it’s true that every dark cloud has a silver lining, but sometimes silver linings are the main event and not the sideshow. Silver linings can be the star, not the cameo. Silver linings are life itself, not just life’s lessons.

See, it’s been exactly two months since the government announced the first case of Covid-19 here in Kenya. Those 60 days have felt like 60 years. So many things have changed. Sometimes it feels like I was born on March 12, and in the two months that followed, I grew into adulthood.

There’s been a lot to complain about. A lot. But there is also much to be thankful for. I’ve been alive for more than four decades, but never in those 42 years has there been a time when the world essentially stopped spinning on its axis.

I was born in a rat race and I’ve been running ever since. Which might be why the cessation of activities that the new coronavirus has visited upon us is so surreal. We’re used to doing as opposed to being. But this strange new world has forced us to focus on what really matters, to focus on where we should be directing out energies, and what we should care about.

It’s been a rapid learning curve, which has been uncomfortable all through, but today —1,440 hours later—I see some silver linings.

‘Handbags’

The biggest is my daughter, who turns six next Sunday. We’ve spent two months more-or-less joined at the hip and now I know why some parents call their kids ‘handbags’. Wherever I go, she is. We fight every single day, but we have never slept angry.

She knows me better than I know myself, and I feel like I’m just getting to know her, which is such an indictment for a mother. She is a gift that reveals itself with every rising of the sun.

I’ve learned to read her moods, energies and feelings. I’ve learned to anticipate her reactions and to filter her truths from her manipulations. Most of all, I’ve learned what she learns in school. Before this Covid-19 came around, her education was her teachers’ responsibility.

As long as she was getting an education, I wasn’t too bothered about how she acquired it. With the advent of online, home-schooling I have found a new respect for teachers, and everything they do to give the gift of literacy and comprehension. Guys, being a teacher is not easy. Being a teacher and a mum at the same time? Let me not say anything. It is a baptism by fire, but I thank God that the anointing lasts for a lifetime.

Fresh appreciation

My other silver lining is me, and my relationship with the universe. You know what they say: We plan, and God laughs. Guys, God is chuckling at this rebel child who believed with all her heart that life could be lived without much reference to the universal blueprint. And I’m not talking about the gods who have been shackled by religion, ritual and rote. 

I’m talking about the God who fashioned my spirit into human form and sent me across the river between those who came before and those who are, now. I have a fresh appreciation for the force of nature in all its glory. And a naïve sense of awe for the capacity of a Creator to intervene in creation.

Yes, I do understand that some people do not believe in a higher power, or an overarching architect, but whatever your beliefs, the world being on pause is still an opportunity to get in touch with the source of life, whatever that source may be to you.

There is a method to this madness, and our healing as a planet is right in the middle of the chaos. Many have argued that this pandemic was orchestrated by hell and its people, but whether that’s the case or not, the good that could come from this cessation in activities has the potential to be much better than the bad.

We all have the chance to reconnect with who we really are, and what really matters to us. To rearrange our priorities and bring them into alignment with our truest dreams, hopes, and aspirations.

This is our chance – one of many I imagine – to excavate all the authentic and meaningful things that make us human; that define us as humanity. And if that isn’t a silver lining then I wouldn’t know one if it slapped me in the face.