sirens.

I remember, as a child, thinking about the power of a siren. I remember being in the car one day as my mum drove down a familiar street and hearing a siren. I remember watching as all the cars pulled over to let it by. I remember thinking that it was amazing that the sound of a siren had the power to make everyone stop, if only for a moment. It didn’t matter who you were, or where you were going, you just stopped. And then, as soon as the source of the siren passed, and the lingering sound faded into the distance, everyone carried on. Carried on with their lives, quickly forgetting the siren’s call. 

The power of the siren struck me. I wondered if a siren could be used on a bigger scale. If somehow we could make a siren ring throughout all the world to make everyone stop. To make everyone take a moment. To stop the fighting. To stop the pollution. To stop the destruction. To unite everyone, if only for a moment, and maybe, just maybe, it would help people realize what is important. To realize that we are all in this together.

If we all stopped for a moment, and listened to the siren call. Stopped and took a breath. 

For some reason I found myself thinking about this the other day. I began thinking about the pandemic and how, in many ways, it has been a 15 month siren heard all over the world. In March 2020 that siren began wailing. And everyone pulled over. We pulled over and stopped. We stopped living our lives as we knew them. 

And the siren kept ringing. 

For 15 months we have had a siren ringing in our ears. And that siren has forced us to change in many ways. That siren has caused deep pain for so many people while for others it may have been a mere inconvenience. In any case, it has made us all rethink the way we live, work, communicate, and socialize. This siren forced change. But what strikes me is the power of the siren to mobilize all of humanity in a global effort to take care of one another. Of course, I am over simplifying things. But still. I do not think I am too far off. 

For 15 months a siren has wailed, and we have stopped. 

Now that siren call is fading away, but it is not yet gone. We can feel the echoes of the siren in our minds. In our bones. And I wonder how we will proceed. I wonder how the lasting impacts of a 15 month siren heard and felt across the world will affect us all. I wonder how the transition back to ‘normal’ will be. Is this a time to reconsider what ‘normal’ is or should be? Is there anything we want to learn from the siren call that has stopped us in our tracks these last 15 months? 

What can we learn from the collective power of stopping?

When a siren wails by as we drive down the road we stop. And then we move on. We forget the siren, we continue driving, we live our lives. Will we move on quite as quickly from this siren? It is hard to imagine. Even as the grocery stores remove the arrows from the floors, faces begin reappearing from behind masks, and we are allowed to gather again, I do not think we will forget. 

A siren that passes us on the road lasts seconds. We forget it in seconds. This siren lasted 15 months, and continues to reverberate. As it does begin to fade though, and we contemplate a return to ‘normal,’ I hope that we will all stop to consider how this siren demonstrated that we are indeed all connected. No matter who we are. What we believe. Where we live. What language we speak. This siren has wailed across all the earth. 

And we all stopped.