Greetings. I’m posting on Saturday night March 21st, just around the time of the spring equinox. Normally this time of year, celebrated in the Old Calendar as the moment when light and darkness are in balance and light moves into ascendency, is a happy season for me. I love long summer evenings (light mornings less so) and often in the northern climes, these longer days are accompanied by an increase of gloriously social outside activities. Here in Berlin, we typically see restaurants spilling out onto the sidewalks onto well-worn benches, the long-awaited openings of Bier Gartens around town, the beginning of a beloved season of festivals and concerts and general pagan merriment of all types.

But, of course, not so fast this year.

As I check in with friends and family around the globe (thank the good lord for the internet; Tim Berners-Lee, you are a savior), there appear to be two main categories of people reacting to this time-out-of-mind virus phenomenon; those who now have way too much to do (people living in close proximity with extended family, for example, most critically with children who must now be entertained 24/7) and those who have…the completely opposite problem, that of too little, of almost total isolation for an indefinite period. For the former, I am predicting either a bumper crop of divorces and/or babies; for the latter (where I find myself), I am predicting an equally serious problem of chronic self-talking, heavy self-medicating with drugs of choice, and a lot of really really bad hair days.

But I have a suggestion, the reason for this post. What I am finding truly helpful and uplifting these days is….watching various incarnations of “Britain’s Got Talent” and “America’s Got Talent” and “Got Talent Champions” from the past few years. This new binge craze has taken me completely by surprise; hence my sharing this idea with you.

Let me be clear – I’m really not a popular culture gal, never have been. I’m only now learning about hits that were big in 2014. I don’t know gangnam style from hip-hop from K-pop. I’ve never been cool and I’m certainly not going to start now, not by any stretch of the imagination.

But @Got Talent is about something more, something deeper, something that might have a thing or two to teach us about ourselves and how we respond to the current moment. And hence my recommendation of these superficially superficial shows to you.

First, these programs are about people taking enormous risk. Most of the folks who walk out on that stage have probably never performed in any venue even vaguely like that huge auditorium where they find themselves. They’ve been in their little village in Cornwall or Louisiana or Lithuania, honing their hobby and nursing their passion for a long long time. They are nurses or schoolchildren or morticians or some other career that has kept them from their dream but this is their Big Chance and they are going for it, guns blazing. I can’t even begin to imagine the courage it must take to walk out on that stage in from of Simon Cowell and his various collections of colleagues to say nothing of a few thousand strangers.

Second, it is about people experiencing extraordinary transformation in real time – through the belief and the reality, that two minutes literally can change one’s life. A small number of these folks literally go from rags to riches in front of our very eyes. I have googled some of the younger participants I’ve seen on earlier seasons and discovered that they went almost immediately from bobby socks and pink sparkly Nikes to packed houses in Vegas and seven-figure recording deals with major studios. Astonishing.

But third, the part, the part I like the absolute best, is about the power of intent and focus.  This is the part where Simon Cowell (this is, of course, his show, his empire, his little retirement fund on legs, clearly) stops the vocal performances and takes a teachable moment with the performers. You can see it on his face as the song begins. He is listening, listening carefully, but he isn’t happy. He shakes his head and waves his right hand and the astonishingly good audio support suddenly stops cold. The audience doesn’t make a sound. The momentarily decapitated performer stands mutely on the stage, staring at Simon, and he stares back. He asks for another song the participant may have readied. Sometimes he suggests a song they don’t know at all and gives them an hour to prepare and a bottle of water. And then he steps back and the magic begins.

So far, at least in the clips and episodes that youtube provides, this is when the performer steps into the breech and  seizes the moment. S/he starts, wobbly for a brief moment, but then finds his/her perch and leans into the piece. The song gets better and better, the volume increases, the audience sits up and takes notice, and the performer digs deep within themselves and discovers a place they never knew they had.  You can see it on their face and in their bodies. Simon smiles his secret small smile. And then the piece ends and there’s an auditorium full of people, screaming and clapping and a stage filled with a very happy person and his/her mother, and the rest is history.

Why am I telling you all this? Because, kids, this is our @Got Talent moment. In our own strange and wonderful way, we are now on the stage of the most transformational experience in our personal histories and perhaps the last hundred years or so. Our actions now moving forward will determine who lives and who dies in our community, in our country, and around the world, and more importantly, what society will look like moving forward. We are being called upon to risk, to lean in, and to be transformed in (hopefully) a positive way that will forever change our relationship to our lives, to the lives of those around us in society, and to our planet.

Okay, enough with the heavy. In the meantime, there’s fear and boredom and anxiety and not enough toilet paper and too much pasta. To alleviate all this, just get started with a little Talent and get yourself a little Simon Cowell. Go to youtube and look for the tape for best comedians in 2016. You need this, believe me. You will laugh your a$$ off. And that in and of itself will be a blessing for the hour or so that you will be able to ignore the world’s dire messages or or kids fighting in the dining room, or the fact that you might not see your dear ones until the Solstice.