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I consider my immediate family fortunate to be healthy and able to shelter in place together in our Bronx apartment with our mini poodle. We overlook the Broadway Bridge and the Harlem River Ship Canal, blessed with great light, a cross breeze, and a Hopper-esque industrial view complete with trains, planes, boats, bridges, and trees.

Directly across the water, we overlook New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital. Pre-COVID, it was just a nice view. Since COVID it has taken on a different veneer. At 7 pm the cacophony of pots and pans clank from rooftops and casement windows to cheer on the frontline warriors battling the unseen enemy across the water inside the hospital that was once just a building. Now it is a place of worship that commands reverence. The number of ambulances constantly crossing the bridge with their wailing sirens that cut through the day and night are finally and thankfully waning.  This is a time of broken hearts and mending society. This is a time of deep learning. 

One of the things this pandemic has taught me is how easy it is to live with less. I’ve learned to save in places I hadn’t considered before. What do I need to do my job? Reliable internet, a computer, a desk, my brain, my experience, passion, talent, curiosity, drive, fingers (one benefit of being a writer), and creative partners (which I have in abundance just one Zoom call away).

Frankly, anything I’m spending money on today is pre-COVID costs like web hosting, domain names, subscription fees, high-speed internet, etc. I’m considering each one of these expenses under a new lens of what’s essential from now on. What do I need for the future of my business? What do I need to serve my clients best? What do I need to serve life itself through my business?

Like many Americans, I am currently unemployed. Two projects scheduled for March evaporated. All my clients have gone quiet.

My life partner and I are raising our 10-year-old adopted daughter. She attends an independent school in NYC, now on-line. New York City is on shut-down through June 13, as of now. Summer camps are closed. The future of business and life is uncertain. But the reality is, it has always been uncertain. As much control as we might have imagined we had over any of it, this pandemic has crushed. The only thing we can control is who we are being in the face of uncertainty.

I’m a business owner of a branding collective dedicated to helping build companies and organizations with a higher purpose, including sustaining life on earth. I also am a gig worker, a freelance creative director, who, until now, has been hired off and on for decades by big ad agencies and digital firms to do creative campaigns for their clients. COVID-19 has given me pause during the Great Pause to consider the future in a new way for myself, my family, and my business.

It’s given me pause to donate time to a non-profit dedicated to helping the world’s most vulnerable children. It’s given me pause to help a friend launch his business. It’s given me pause to form an exciting new creative alliance. It’s given me pause to reflect, meditate, and ponder my soul’s desire. It’s given me pause to connect with colleagues, friends, and family who matter most. It’s given me pause to think about want vs. need, in business and life. What do consumers need vs. what do companies want them to believe? What does humanity need? In any case, Truth has never been more paramount.

COVID-19 has taken the lives of at least 60,299 Americans so far to date, per the CDC. It’s ravaged the livelihoods of over 36 million and countless more who haven’t been able to make unemployment claims. It’s shuttered retail icons like J. Crew, JC Penny, and Neiman Marcus and snuffed out countless small businesses nationwide. It’s stolen the graduation ceremonies of millions of students. It’s canceled national and local sporting events. It’s halted international and national travel, weddings, reunions, and celebrations of all kinds. It’s altered the trajectory of learning for all children. It’s taught our children to fear touch, closeness, and the air itself.

COVID-19 has simultaneously brought humanity to its knees. It’s forced us to focus on what’s most important. It’s forced us to rethink our needs and to prioritize our health. It’s forced us to understand with every cell of our being how connected we all are, in sickness and in health. It’s forced us to grasp how one action or inaction can mean the difference between life and death for thousands. It’s inspired us to look in on our elderly or single neighbors and authentically thank our delivery men, mail women, and grocery clerks. COVID-19 has laid bare how racial and socioeconomic inequality has made some more vulnerable to succumb to COVID-19 than others. This virus has rubbed our collective face in the ugly truth that humanity’s unchecked and continued encroachment on the turf of wildlife has resulted in the most significant collective loss of human life in a century. All while we sit and watch the incredulous folly of elected officials ramp up the most dangerous misinformation campaign in history.

So what will we learn? What will we take into our new future? What will we leave behind? Will we live with less of what doesn’t work and more of what does? Will we feel richer buying less? Will we sit idly by less often and speak truth to power every opportunity we get. Will we make ourselves less busy and more accessible to one another? Will we complain less and vote more? Will we check in more on others and check out less on our phones? Will we live with less plastic surrounded by more beauty? Will we spend less on our hair and save more for a rainy pandemic? Will we teach our children to live with less? Less screen time and more conversation? Less stuff and more play? Less tv and more books? Will we keep more physical distance and less spiritual distance? Will we live with less fear and distrust and allow this epic of all human tragedies to teach us to love and cherish more?

On Friday, March 8, Whole Foods Market became the first retailer in the US to require labeling of all genetically modified foods.

They are no longer just about being a destination where consumers can purchase a wide variety of WHOLE foods but they are about ensuring consumers have access to the WHOLE story about what’s in the foods they buy.

I project this will go down in history as one of the most successful and important brand initiatives of 2013, and perhaps of this century. Whole Food’s choice to zig against the zag of its very own industry, putting an internal policy in place to help protect consumers, will not only cement the trust and loyalty of its customer base but will win over a lion’s share of new customers hungry to stand alongside them in this fight for consumer protection and public health (even if they have to pay more to do so). This will inevitably cause a ripple effect that will impact all grocers and the entire food industry, and will surely trickle up to Washington policymakers. And we’ll get to watch this delicious scene play out over these next few years as Whole Foods puts its stand in force.

Whole Foods has given food companies 5 years to get their act together, or to be evicted from their hard-won shelf space. Even in the face of consumer criticism about one of their own private label products. Whole Food’s 365 cereal came under scrutiny as it contained genetically modified corn (as do most cereals). But before the press had a field day with this, they quickly re-formulated this cereal to remove the GMO corn. Ok, so no company is perfect. But how quickly the consumer is willing to forgive and forget when they see a company that has the big picture in mind.  Big Food, Big Pharma, and not even Big Government will be able to hold on to their justification much longer that it’s ok to feed Americans genetically modified ingredients without them knowing about it.

88% of corn and 94% of soy crops were genetically modified in the US in 2011. Soy and soy derivatives are in most bread, crackers, chips, cookies, candy, canned tuna fish, processed sauces, salad dressings, condiments, and this is only the tip of the soyberg. Many restaurants use soybean oil to cook with because it’s inexpensive. Soy lecithin is used in many vitamins and supplements, and it’s even in most chocolate. Holy Godiva! If you look on the back of many Trader Joe labels (and labels across the board), you’ll often see a note that says “Made in a facility that processes Soy, etc.”.  So there’s almost no escape from soy. Or the negative health effects soy produces on human physiology, apart from the genetically modified variety. Of course, we all know how pervasive high fructose corn syrup is in our food and beverage supply, especially with all the negative press it’s gotten in recent years that it’s one of the leading contributors to diabetes and obesity in America. Thanks for your help on this one Mayor Bloomberg and others who have waged effective campaigns to get the word out on this issue. But have we yet grappled with the concept that nearly all this corn syrup is coming from GMO corn?

No wonder PepsiCo and Coca-Cola spent millions last year lobbying against the hard-fought GMO food labeling ballot in California. What’s scarier is that they won (with the financial help of the biotech industry). They actually succeeded at convincing voters that mandatory labeling of GMO foods would spread unfounded fear among Americans, would raise food prices, and would have a negative impact on farmers.  To help seal the deal on this argument and put this ballot to rest (at least until now), our own Food and Drug Administration, the World Health Organization, and the American Medical Association piped in and told Americans that genetically modified foods aren’t proven to have a negative effect, when in fact there is plenty of evidence that points to the opposite perhaps being true. But the real truth is, the amount of research done in the area of GMO food testing on human beings (or even lab rats) is insufficient to make an argument for GMO labeling stick in the face of multimillion-dollar smear campaigns conducted by giant corporations. So even though we don’t have the research or the voters or the policies to force change at this time, we’ve now got a rebel game-changer in Whole Foods.

So kudos Whole Foods for living up to your brand name in a WHOLE new and powerful way that makes a difference for the WHOLE of America.

Source for photo:

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/478435/eu_votes_for_labels_on_nano_cloned_and_gm_food.html