I’ve been watching our silkworms real closely lately. One day they crawl into a corner to spit out silk and make their cocoon that way. They’ll never eat again. They’ll never poo again. They’ll lie still in metamorphosis for a while and when it’s time to come out as a transformed moth, they mate, lay eggs and die within a week.

Some part of me has been envious of their seemingly natural acceptance of life’s phases. When they are cocooning and transforming, NO ONE comes around luring them with more online distractions… No. All other worms respectfully creep around them looking for their very own place to cocoon. Respecting and honouring this different phase of life. No looking back, probably no looking forward. Just spinning in the moment as they do.

I’ve been hearing the Earth’s call so loudly to cocoon in, pause, reflect, reassess and listen, that I cannot not listen. How rare is it that pretty much all of humanity more or less simultaneously gets an invitation to drop everything non-essential and go back to basics? How can we let this unique and amazing opportunity go? Don’t get me wrong. It hasn’t been all rosy jamming around the firepit, semi-successful gardening, home dance parties, homemade pizza and movie nights and cozy massage sessions with my kids. It’s also been teary, confusing, disturbing, frustrating, painful, all-over-the-place, too loud, too much, too little and messy.

Now, many are starting to talk about going back to ‘normal’ soon and I feel I’ve just fully landed with my nose in the sand and no idea how to get a blink out of those sandy eyes yet. How can people even talk about going back to ‘normal’ when normal has obviously not worked out? I’m just writing an article on the Great Barrier Reef and with over half of it dead, mainly due to climate change, it’s just one of many examples to demonstrate how the old ‘normal’ hasn’t worked out. It’s also a very improbable notion that society can start moving forward again when four planets are retrograding over the next few months. Retrograges are about cocooning, pausing, reassessing, shedding, letting go, listening in…

Also, why rush this process and expect instant learning and insight, a new world where we’ve sorted all our shit out within just a couple of months? Because we are uncomfortable with nose dives deep into the sand. But if we don’t give ourselves enough time to honour this in-between phase of cocooning, of not doing, of being neither worm nor moth, neither old nor new, with no idea how we are and where we are going, how to define ourselves individually and collectively… without that phase there will be no beautiful, soft, silky butterfly-like creatures in the end. We’ll just re-collapse into chaos. And maybe that time with less reserves to spin silk cocoons left, the dive will be deeper, the fall harder, the processing more unpleasant… until we learn that certain things like a new, more sustainable world order can’t be rushed. Certain changes are so big, they deserve a proper cocooning beforehand.