Zombie Virus-The Seven Levels Of Decay
Maybe it’s time to panic. I’m seeing it everywhere now, aren’t you? They’re in the mall, walking side by side, looking away from each other while the noise of pointless chatter hides the horrible silence of their souls. They’re in the restaurants sharing a table while each look somewhere over the other’s shoulder with dull and listless eyes. They are at the movies replicating their at home behavior of staring straight ahead, shoving snacks down their throats and choosing TV over reality… they are texting, or surfing the web, or emailing anyone except for the one they chose to be with at some earlier point in time.

**Zombies: fictional undead creatures, typically depicted as mindless, reanimated human corpses~Wikipedia

First it’s the lovely Cinderella story; he loves her, she loves him, both are wonderful/beautiful/talented/generous/caring individuals.

**We were together, I forget the rest. ~Walt Whitman

2. Then somebody gets careless and draws first blood. The virus has entered through the injury and begins the incubation period. This could have been prevented by noticing and addressing the injury immediately; treating it with a loving heart, focusing hard on the facts we discovered in step one.

**A spark neglected makes a mighty fire. ~Robert Herrick

3. Unfortunately the virus spreads and begins to affect motor skills. There is a steep decline in the hugging, hand-holding, and walking towards each other instead of away.

**Hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable.~ The Wizard of Oz

4. The next ability to bite the dust is verbal communication skills. It begins with ‘it’s no big deal’, ‘I’m fine’, and ‘don’t worry about it’, and quickly degrades into accusations, blame, and the additional drawing of blood by both parties.

**As soon as we find someone to blame, we act as if we’ve solved the problem. ~Margaret J Wheatly

5. The diagnosis is pending now. The people who always wanted to be just like this couple don’t want to be infected and begin to keep their distance. The mutterings begin in reference to what should be done. Is there a treatment for this? Will both parties be willing to go through the treatment? When two become one, and one goes down, the other will not remain standing. So treatment for two, or amputation of one from another?

**You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens. ~Rumi

6. The most horrifying result is from a lack of any action at all. No matter who initiated what at the beginning of this fairy tale, to stagger around lifeless, emotionless, damaged, and numb is not acceptable for any human being. Serious measures need to be taken: dual treatment, amputation, or quarantine.

**Virus: a small infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of other organisms. – Wikipedia

7. The eyes of the heart begin to perceive the other as a nightmare instead of the person of their dreams. Both are blinded to the beauty, heart and courage of the other. Trust is undermined and then no longer exists. Each injury causes a reciprocal injury until scar tissue on each heart renders them both hard and immoveable. The virus thrives as the hearts die.

**Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.- Anaïs Nin

Be ever vigilant.