The current COVID surge is bigger than ever by a lot, particularly in Europe and North America. The daily infections rate blew previous records away yesterday in many places.

Here are some telling graphs showing daily new cases in some countries. Note how quickly the latest spike has shot up.

United Kingdom

France

Spain

Italy

Canada

USA

COVID is especially rampant in New York and Florida right now. The current surge makes New York’s previous surges look like little speed bumps. Those two states combined added more than 114K new cases yesterday, both hitting all-time records.

New York

Florida

Nevada

My home state of Nevada is starting to surge again as well.

California

Here’s neighboring California, which has a similar pattern to Nevada, except they have almost 40M people while Nevada has about 3M.

So in many places, there’s more contagious COVID out there right now than ever, and it’s still increasing rapidly.

Vaccination

Rachelle and I got our first vaccine shots on April 10 and May 8 (basically as soon as we could), and we got the booster on December 22. All three were the Moderna version.

The first shot was the easiest. I only had a little bit of arm soreness.

The second shot was the worst, with each of us being knocked out energy-wise for about 24 hours, except that Rachelle was laid up for the first day while my worst day was the second day. Within 48 hours though, we both felt fine.

We also had some fatigue from the booster shot, but it was milder than after the second shot.

As far as we know, neither of us has gotten COVID, but a lot of people we know have gotten it, including some CGCers. Some have had pretty mild cases while others had a really rough time. Some friends have lost family members to COVID.

Why I Got Vaccinated

I like to make decisions based on looking at the objective and the subjective sides. Normally I find the most clarity on the subjective side, so I’ll share a little about how I made this decision.

The objective arguments for and against vaccination are already pretty well presented by society, so I’m sure you’ve encountered an abundance of that by now. I’m not going to rehash those arguments here, partly because I don’t find that side the most interesting to consider.

What I did consider was which of the objective stories I found to represent the most interesting invitation to explore. Since I don’t have the means to personally prove or disprove anything about vaccination – it’s not like I have a bio lab in my garage – I could frame it as a question of whom to trust. But that type of framing is still too objective and not particularly helpful. I could spend weeks investigating and still not have a clear winner. It would be exhausting to try to make every meaningful decision that way.

A better subjective framing is to consider which story invitation looks most interesting or appealing. Which potential storyline do I want to personally participate in? Where do I want to take my story next?

One story aspect that appealed to me was regarding vaccination as a form of biological education. I’d be giving my body a taste of what’s coming up, so it can prepare itself. I was curious to see what the vaccine would feel like and how my body would respond to it. I liked the idea of pre-teaching my body something about the virus. I’d rather be biologically more prepared than less prepared. I like to explore, and vaccination seemed like an interesting way to let my body explore how it wants to relate to the virus.

By contrast I found the potential unvaccinated story lines to be unappealing. I probably would have gone that route in my 20s since it would have appealed to my rebellious side back then. I’d have gladly pushed back against society’s demands. Today I feel that that the rebel part of my story has run its course, so I don’t consider that to be interesting story today. I find that kind of story pathway too boring, predictable, and cliché. These days I prefer invitation into more refined and interesting storylines. I don’t have the same story tastes that I did when I was younger.

One reason I choose vaccination is that it quickly moves me through potentially boring parts of the story, so I can focus more attention on the interesting bits. By getting vaccinated I put the vaccination question to rest quickly. There’s nothing more to decide about it since I’ve already done it. I don’t have to waste any energy on fussing over whether or not to do it. This frees up mental and emotional resources that I can invest elsewhere.

Then I can look deeper into the big picture storyline that’s playing out in the world. The simulation is making a big, disruptive move here. Why? What’s the invitation in this shift? These are questions I find fascinating and very worthy of consideration. I’ve made numerous shifts in my life by pondering them, and I’ve been seeing a great deal of cooperative flow from reality in response.

One way I like to assess how well my story is doing is by how much life seems to be cooperating with my decisions. If I’m out of sync with life, my progress gets bogged down, and it feels like I’m swimming against the current. I felt that if I went the unvaccinated route, I’d be swimming against the tide. Reality was dropping plenty of hints that this would be an invitation into a very resistance-filled story path, and we’re seeing that play out today, such as with vaccine mandates. I looked at that branch of storylines and thought, “Blech! No thanks!”

On an objective level, the world seems like it’s been going kittywampus. But I have a deep and abiding trust in the flow of life since that’s the most permanent relationship I can invest in. I know that the objective story is just the surface, and there are much deeper happenings beneath that layer. The subjective layer of life has been unfolding in some really fascinating ways lately. I love where the story flow is going there. I’m glad that I didn’t choose to thrash around with the surface story in this case. I found much juicer invitations beneath that layer.

For example, since Rachelle and I have been spending a lot of time at home, we’ve invested more social time in Conscious Growth Club. There have been CGC Zoom activities pretty much every day this month, including playing games online, watching movies, and doing various activities together.

This week we’ve just begun putting together a mastermind group of members who want to invest in building up their YouTube channels for 2022 and beyond. That aligns nicely with many members’ lifestyle and business goals.

There’s a lot of interesting story playing out socially within CGC, and it feels like we’re getting better at coordinating our growth experiences, like our stories are synchronizing more than usual.

I feel like the COVID situation has been a gift. It blocked some avenues but presented an invitation to go deeper in different directions. In order to properly invest in these other storylines, I felt it was wise to speed through the vaccination chapter, so I could get to the good parts of the story sooner.

Subjective Decisions

I find that when I give a lot of thought to the subjective aspect of life, pondering the meaning and story aspects of key decisions, the overall flow of life is so much better, and I find beauty even in chaos.

When you get hung up trying to make decisions by weighing objective factors, I recommend flipping over to the subjective side. Consider that you’re living in a simulation and that your relationship with the simulation is the most important relationship of all because it’s your #1 most enduring relationship. Hence you’ve got to do your best to keep that relationship strong and healthy no matter what happens objectively.

What binds the objective and subjective viewpoints together is the lens of story. A story has objective events, and it also includes the inner experience of the characters. So a great shortcut to making good decisions is to consider how your decisions will affect the story flow of your life.

How will your decisions affect events? How will your decisions affect your inner experience? How will your decisions affect your overall relationship with life?

I felt that if I remained unvaccinated, it would likely cause issues in my relationship with life, like it would restrict the flow. I think I made the right call there since the flow has been excellent.

If you’re in the flow too, keep doing what you’re doing because it’s obviously working for you. But if you feel that life has become stunted or restricted, that’s an invitation to reconsider how you’ve been making decisions. Look especially at which decisions have been straining your relationship with reality, and set the intention to put that relationship first in your life and to keep moving towards greater harmony and meaningful story. Lean towards invitations to trust life even more.