Darice Jones and Sarah Pizer-Bush

Sarah Pizer-Bush
“Yesterday Project”
Video collage & voiceover
Inspiration piece

Me, Myself, and Tomorrow
By Darice Jones
Response

Who would have thought that we’d be here, inside a whole new way of life, just 6 short years after the first pandemic started, and 3 short years after the 2nd one hit? They called the 2nd one a pandemic anyway, even though most people on the planet weren’t affected. The virus was strong in places where only the uber wealthy ever tread. Truly the 1⁄2 a percent at the top of the resource game and the types of
people whom they let into their inner circles.

I mean, really.

Had you ever even heard of the Island of Crim before 2023?

It’s March 6th, 2026 and everything has changed. There are no more armies, no more national or state governments, no more celebrities, tech giants, police, national sporting leagues, stock exchanges, or money, or stand-alone industries at all. And it’s amazing how the earth itself and all its species have started to bounce back and build something better.

My great-grandfather on my father’s side, Yefet Pevzner, would always say, “The entire world would change in an instant given the right set of events. So, never doubt your own capacity to make great change.” At least that’s what I am told of him. If we’re lucky, we all have that one legendary grandparent or person from a previous era whose words reverberate generations later, making us feel like there’s
more lessons to learn and more life to be lived.

Turns out grampa Yefet was right. And amazingly, I get to live in the change. Luckily, when the global shift happened, most people were very much fed up with the status quo. Many people had spent the first pandemic, back in 2020, imagining the kind of world we would rather be living in. So, when the old extraction-based hierarchical paradigm started to go away, average people waisted no time taking their
liberation in hand and transforming the world. For the first time in my life, I have seen the true power of the adage, “think globally, act locally.”

Which brings me to my point. Our local Bay Area Community Collective, made up of regular people from 12 Bay Area counties, started the Wellness Alliance. Since the collective agreement of people all over is to share our resources, tons of groups have started up to make sure everyone is well taken care of, including the caretakers. I had been living with just one roommate, but since the change, we’ve opened
up the building and I have 5 roommates. I wouldn’t have ever thought I could stand to live with so many people. I’m a water sign with epic sensitivities to energies. However, it turns out, when given the opportunity to fine-tune those gifts in nature and to learn to use them in service to the collective good, I am able to work with my feelings like never before.

Today, I have agreed to bring my healing gifts of song and my valuing your tears workbook to a video- conference that is expected to attract over 16,000 community members. The old me would have been terrified. But in this new world, it feels natural. My only job is to show up and be love. The members of the Wellness Alliance who asked me to lead this half-day set of activities found out that I love quirky clothing and small eclectic items. In exchange for my presentation, I am being given two things. 1. An assignment to spend the whole day tomorrow walking around my neighborhood, seeing myself reflected in different things, and then journaling in song about my connection to everything. 2. A companion who will walk with me in the local redwood forest, sharing stories about loneliness, togetherness, and imagining what life will be like for future generations now that it seems humanity has finally decided to let the earth recover.

One of my standing wellness prescriptions from the community is regular companion walks where there are high trees and moist soil. If the world hadn’t changed, I would never have known just how much adding that one thing to my life would open me up to my larger purpose.

When we are not feeling as though there is a constant deficit, people, I, we can do some pretty incredible things on this journey of becoming. Maybe that is my thing – the legacy statement I will leave for future generations. 100 years from now, some great-great grandson of mine (whether through lineage or through spiritual connection) will talk of how great-great grandparent Sarai was right, just like Yefet.

By Darice M. Jones
Written in the Year of Toni Morrison ©2023

 

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