We are addicted. Addicted to doing all the things. We drop daily into doing a million and just one more thing. Pandemic Fear of Death stepped in and stopped us. Collectively we are all sitting. For some of us that is very, very hard to do. A momentary hangover with period of withdrawal followed by craving and pawing and inner turmoil. I’ve never thought I was addicted to anything except coffee and exercise leaving the more soft and hardcore “other drugs” to those who are true addicts but I am realizing that we are all addicted. As we sit, as I sit, and watch time moving by and feel the slowness of the earth I realize things in the “before” were killing me. I would have never given a second thought to dying a “natural death”.  My “natural death” options were: death to old age, natural disaster, sickness, heart failure, cancer, stroke, MVA, plane crash, gunshot, etc. but stopping now, pausing, I have to put all those possibilities aside. None of those killers are really “natural” except the old age category.  Most of those causes of death come from stress and living in an age of industrial society. In Okinawa, Japan the highest life expectancy on the planet comes from a village life of slow living. We have learned from that community that diet and daily exercise play a huge role in longevity. Which of us in the past 20 years has had the luxury to make enough money without killing ourselves? Made enough space in our busy lives to slow down enough to live in harmony with time?  To live slow is to either be extremely wealthy and not want to participate in the party or to live in poverty and be okay with not chasing all the glitter of more and more.  I applaud myself when I have enough extra to stop for 2-3 weeks a year and sit on a beach. I applaud myself when taking care of myself looks like superfoods and bullet coffee. I applaud myself when I get to that crossfit class, that yoga class, that hike. As though fitting those things in amidst a million and one other things is a goal that will keep me living a little bit longer. Terms like quality time or self care…. these are terms that have been created out of a desperate place of chaos and speed.  Sitting here, staying at home and really coming home I hear my inner voice through all the restlessness….I hear my breathing and I feel a collective sigh of relief.  My worth is not my dollar amount. My debt is not my crime. I’m breathing on the planet and I’m doing just fine. We don’t have to go back to normal. Normal was not working.  Addiction was never ever gonna be enough.  So why don’t we all just rebel and demand our sovereignty.  Don’t let the quarantine be over!  Stay at home if we want to!  Demand a life without payment to the almighty gods of economy!  Demand our birth rite to live a life of true freedom without holding our breath, without forcing our exhale to be any faster then it needs to be.  Let us let go of holding hands with addiction and try for dying a natural death. Find life in the slow world that has been here turning since the beginning of time.