Prologue
“COVID” was a word that we heard every single day. There was no way to avoid it. It was the absolute star of the show with top billing in our culture, politics and our various faiths. It commanded our daily thoughts and conversations. The virus appeared to be omnipotent and unstoppable, which made it seem supernatural. For many, that made COVID an angry god to be feared because we could not control it, understand it or outflank it.
Viruses are microscopic spores that can only survive by replicating inside a living host. Technically, viruses are not even classified as living organisms because they don’t have metabolic components. It was baffling to contemplate how something so miniscule that wasn’t even alive and that didn’t have the capacity to think could overpower and outsmart the entire planet. However, a virus has genetic mechanisms that can adapt to human nature and existing environmental conditions in order to modify itself for more efficient replication. As it reproduces, a virus alters its own behavior and physiology, often becoming more lethal and contagious in future derivations. And yet, as was said by one of my clients who was an architect for hospitals, “COVID is very easy to kill.” The irony of her statement was earthshattering.
I imagined COVID as a paradoxical prehistoric beast that took the form of a T-Rex, with a giant head and wildly snapping jaws that held multiple rows of huge, razor-sharp teeth. The fantastical COVID T-Rex vanquished our lives as we trembled in the darkest recesses of Stone Age caves in my dreamworld. Intellectually, I was aware that dinosaurs predated humans by 68 million years, and they never hunted Paleolithic tribes. But emotionally, I couldn’t help but visualize the COVID T-Rex gnawing and devouring the unfortunate throngs of human flesh as if we were all fast-food hamburgers served up by McDonald’s restaurants; that corporation stopped keeping count in 1994 when their red marquis with the golden arches read “Over 99 Billion Served.” The world sick map that monitored the millions of COVID infections and deaths made me think of our disposable society; we tossed the remnants of forgotten lives into the trashcan of history as if they were spent ketchup packets.
Philosophically, I compared survival in the COVID age to praying for mercy so that my village would not be sacked and burned to the ground by an invader like Genghis Khan. Though he was a fierce and bloody emperor who could not be deposed, Genghis Kahn was also one of the greatest unifiers in human history. Similarly, COVID conquered all the peoples of the Earth and brought us to submission. But the virus was also a great equalizer that smashed through all race and class distinctions with perfect impunity.
Creatively, the design of the COVID spore resembled a cloved orange, the kind that could be hung from a decorative ribbon as an ornament to fill a room with the scent of holiday spice. Classified as a coronavirus that caused severe pneumonia, COVID mutilated the lungs and was known to ravage and destroy various other organs and systems of the body, often with long-term effects. The term “coronavirus” referred to its shape; it was among the largest of singlestrand RNA virus spores with red club-shaped spikes that protruded from its orbed surface in a way that resembled the aura of the sun. The common cold is also a coronavirus.
The solar corona, derived from the ancient Greek word for “crown,” is a searing mass of plasma energy that explodes millions of miles into space with temperatures that far exceed the sun’s surface. This solar energy controls the ebb and flow of all life on Earth, an analogy that succinctly described the way COVID ordered all our lives. Humanity had no choice but to be humbled by the relentless invading army of microscopic, aerosolized particulates.
When first analyzed, COVID-19 was dubbed a “novel” virus because, to our knowledge, the exact species had never been encountered before. The word “novel,” as well as the “-19” extension, lasted about a month before it was discarded by popular culture. From then on, the virus was colloquially known as “COVID.” The moniker “COVID” was chosen for this book because the abbreviation was singularly used by the general public in everyday conversation.
The World Health Organization first assigned a temporary name for the virus, “2019-nCoV,” based on the year it was discovered. It was later renamed “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2,” or “SARS-CoV-2,” by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. It was also known as “Human Coronavirus 2019,” or “HCoV-19.” The acronym “COVID-19” (derived from “Coronavirus Disease 2019”) was the formal name chosen by the World Health Organization to avoid stigmatizing the origins of the virus with specific populations, geography, or animals as the root cause of the pandemic.
SARS-1 was the first pandemic and the first known coronavirus outbreak of the 21st century, having occurred in 2002-2004. It spread to at least 8000 people and to nearly every continent before it was effectively contained. More than 700 people died, and SARS-1 was estimated to have cost between $30 and $50 billion to the global economy. SARS-1 was a mere hiccup compared to what happened to us with its successor, the COVID pandemic that began in 2019. Humanity failed to contain COVID as it ravaged the entire world.
History is written by the survivors. As a survivor of the COVID pandemic, I wrote this book as a contribution to the historical record for those in the future to better understand what happened to us during this terrible time. This work is also a study in how we handled the unprecedented pressures we faced, both as nations and as individuals. Included herein are examples of how the perfect storm of coinciding factors completely overwhelmed all our systems of civilization and infiltrated every aspect of human existence.
I committed to recording this tribute because societal memory is often very short, sometimes merely generational. I was astonished to discover that children who sat in my styling chair had no idea that terrorists flew planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon, and planned to destroy the nation’s Capitol Building on September 11, 2001, a mere 20 years prior to the COVID pandemic. And because my own family members refused to speak about the atrocities they witnessed firsthand during the Holocaust, I also knew how the silence of those who were traumatized in catastrophic events tended to magnify the suffering they endured by failing to educate future generations.
When COVID took over our lives, I realized that what I was hearing from my clients needed to be honored and remembered for history. In my experience, people were being far more authentic than ever before, and my little hair salon became a microcosm of what was happening all around the globe. COVID was the single most important thing that ruled and defined every one of us at the time. It was the one thing that brought us together, and it was also the one thing that ripped us apart. I believed the COVID pandemic was the most historically significant event in hundreds of years. It changed absolutely everything about the way we lived.
I often wondered how it came to pass that people widely embraced the idea that a hairstylist’s job included regular and frequent counseling and therapeutic services. During my 30-year career, countless clients told me that “hairstylists are like bartenders – it’s part of your job to listen to everyone’s problems.” My clients expected me to bear witness to all forms of their personal traumas, whether or not I agreed to participate. In so doing, I understood the Wisdom found in retelling the many stories of our collective COVID journey; it was the pathway to healing for us all.
In the early 1990’s, my cosmetology educators instilled the fundamental lesson that there were three things a stylist should never discuss with clients: sex, religion and politics. I never could have dreamt that clients would make it virtually impossible for me to follow that professional advice as we fought to survive. All social boundaries and rules of engagement were cast aside in the COVID age. I only hope this work captured the true essence of our struggles, the same way I was moved when reading the first-hand accounts written by those who were caught up in The Civil War, World Wars I and II, and Vietnam.
In August 2020, six months into the COVID pandemic, a dear friend sent me an internet link to a YouTube video, entitled “Cycles of Time” with Gregg Braden. The video was originally posted in January 2017, three years before the COVID pandemic began. Mr. Braden, an acclaimed author, scientist, and international educator, had been honored as one of the top 100 of “the world’s most spiritually influential people” for each of the preceding 11 years. In his video, Braden explained that science had recognized three distinct, measurable cycles of global changes in time, any one of which could singularly turn the world upside down: 1) the cycle of climate change, 2) the cycle of economic change, 3) the cycle of human conflict. According to Braden, these three powerful cycles repeated at regular, predictable intervals in time. Furthermore, Braden pointed out that the year 2020 marked the peak of a rare, massive convergence of all three of those powerful cycles. This meant the convergence brought an unprecedented amount of chaos with it. Science correlated the rise and fall of the greatest conflicts in human history with the regular and repeated peaks and valleys of the noted cycles of change throughout time.
There is also a direct correlation between the three noted “Cycles of Time” and the magnetic energies of the Sun, the Earth and the human form. Science has proven that the human heart has a magnetic field 5000 times stronger than the human brain, and the magnetic energies of the human body are directly impacted by the celestial bodies in our corner of the galaxy. The convergence of the three great “Cycles of Time” with the magnetic energies within and around us resulted in the complete melding of Earth’s various cultures, religions, governments, economic platforms and ideologies. In essence, the convergence was the intentional blending of all conscious awareness in the human continuum. The phenomena gave us the greatest opportunity to achieve a higher level of Wisdom that could allow us to usher in universal Peace, as long as humanity did not succumb to the impetus of conflict that arises with the fear of change and mass annihilation. It was the supreme test of our time. Braden observed that nature tends to push humanity through extreme conditions in order to encourage and facilitate evolution.
I began writing this book during the first COVID lockdown in March 2020, long before I knew anything of Braden’s work. Final edits on this first volume were finished before the outcome of the pandemic was fully known at month’s end of December 2021. At that time, health officials stated that because the virus spread so thoroughly throughout the world, humanity could be dealing with the impacts of COVID in perpetuity. From the time my business was allowed to reopen after lockdown in June 2020, until the end of December 2021, I completed 3260 salon services. I was blessed to be able to work masked face to masked face with all those clients without experiencing any symptoms of COVID disease. Leaders in the US promised that we would not be placed into lockdown again. But the virus had mutated to forms that were far deadlier and more contagious, and it appeared that survival might require further isolation to slow the spread of disease. To me, COVID was telling us all to take a very long “time out” because we needed to better understand our own souls and relate more positively with each other in a time of violent disharmony. Some called the COVID pandemic “the age of fear.”
I spent my life observing the common patterns of exchange between humans and the Divine all around them. I discovered how the events portrayed in this book lent themselves so easily to Braden’s analysis of the universal mechanics of our earthly existence. Therefore, in keeping with Braden’s example of the three “Cycles of Time,” this work is written in three corresponding volumes: 1) The Climate of Truth, 2) the Economy of Truth, and 3) The Spirit of Truth.