This week, Deepak Chopra published a sharp, insightful column about coronavirus in SF Gate. We’re not going to publish the whole piece right here, but we want to share a snippet here because it provides a fantastic perspective on how we can take the lessons from COVID 19 to build a state that actually supports people and their well-being.

“COVID-19 has made people aware at some level that their well-being is of little interest to the leaders they elect. But the underlying issue is that the wellness movement hasn’t caught on even to the extent that the average person knows how to be well, secure, happy, and self-sufficient for life. I mean this in personal terms, not economic ones. The average person is so fixated on holding a job and the price of gas that it seems like a fantasy to talk about a fulfilling job and the price of unhappiness. We need a new way to be happy based on well-being. To instigate such a radical shift has already begun—the wellness movement is here to stay.

Global warming, despite reactionary resistance, has already alerted the world that any solution must be global. Nationalism only makes the problem worse. Sectarian violence, terrorism, and civil unrest are pointless (as they always have been) if you and the person you hate are both under the same climate threat. If the progressive wing in politics really values well-being, it should propose a secretary position in the cabinet to boost everything that well-being stands for. If that proposal sounds too ideal or even foolish, then you might look in the mirror and ask what your own happiness is based on. If it is based on money, status, possessions, and lifelong consumerism, you need to wake up. Those have been the normal standards of happiness for a long time, but they have led to gross income disparity, a huge carbon footprint, a pitiful level of well-being for the world’s underprivileged, an ingrained prejudice against the poor and anyone “not like us,” and a society in which, beyond our immediate family and friends, all of us feel like strangers in a strange land…

COVID-19 implies a new future and makes it more urgent. Only a new way to find happiness, based on a global self-care movement and personal well-being to replace empty consumerism and mass distractions, has any hope of leading to a better future. Consider this as seriously as you can, and make your own well-being the start of global wellness.”

For the full column, follow the link right here.