In 1998, when the financial crisis hit, my wife and I were in Seville. I remember a friend of mine called me and asked if I had converted everything into dollars. I hadn’t lost anything then, because I had a business, but I didn’t have any money. The business had turnover, had customers who kept buying. Maybe buying less at the time, but I didn’t notice the effects of that crisis. Yes, we had to change prices.
Most people see the crisis as something happening on the outside (with the exception of those who were victims of it, of course): some feel fear, others use it as an excuse to relax. But neither the former nor the latter solve the problem and the task of getting out of the crisis. Because the crisis that occurs on the outside is a clear, distinct and concrete consequence of what is going on inside each person.
Man is so built that if he chooses something, it is bound to happen. Chooses to live a beautiful life and be himself, it will happen. Chooses to survive, to be better than someone else or to appear successful – that’s the fear of being out of the gate and not making it. Such people don’t think about serving this life, they think about surviving. Even a vacation can be an escape from problems. You go back and the problems stay because everything is soaked in fear.
How do you get out of it? You can’t solve an internal problem from the outside. And in general the problem is not solved at the level at which it was created. You have to go higher, look at this situation from above and figure out how everything can be solved. But there’s a nuance to it. All people, when they think a lot, get to know their thoughts. But it’s one thing to think and another thing to see. And it’s a person’s job to see what’s going on.
It’s another thing to see how in tune we are with the world. A virus is not something from another planet. A virus is still the same life. It is simply the response of life to the fact that man lives out of harmony. Moreover, it is not so much living: it is surviving. We spend all our time competing and being better than others. Every action must be done with infinite love. For example, when we look at a tree, we should not see it as raw material for furniture, or we should rather eat strawberries without even considering them, especially if we are full.
This consumerist attitude has led to today’s situation. So if we look at each other and in general at the world and all that surrounds us with a sincere smile and see not what is on the surface, but much deeper, we can change everything. There is a phrase: “You have to start with yourself. And no step will help if you don’t start changing yourself.
The consolidation that is happening right now is great. It’s just not what we do that matters, but how we do it. So consolidation has to be deliberate. Much less you and I.