People are Dying

As my wife and I take a walk around the block, escaping the place in which we are currently sheltering, we realize that right now people are dying in large numbers around the globe due to the Coronavirus.  Then it dawns on us that even before there was such a thing as the Coronaviru people were dying in large numbers every day around the world.  Fifteen million people have been dying daily around the world as a result of hunger alone.  Countless more die daily by murder, war, suicide, automobile accidents, cancer, and various other diseases.  But with the coronavirus it all seems somehow different.  It seems scarier.  More devastating.

 

More personal.  Why is that?  Is it because all of us are in the same boat — stuck at home, with the kids out of school; because our jobs have been suspended; because we can’t go to our favorite bar/ restaurant/ movie theater/ fitness center/ or pretty much anywhere else?  And if we do venture out, within the constraints allowed by our local or national governing authorities, to grab a few grocery items or a tube of toothpaste or something, we must carefully navigate the aisles, avoiding other people and the sound of coughing or sneezing in order to nervously have our purchases rung up and pay for them?  What a way  to live!

 

Mostly, though, we dutifully and rightfully shelter in place.  It didn’t take my wife and I long to notice that our “place” needed some attention if we were to shelter within it for an extended period of time, so we began cleaning, organizing, rearranging, discarding.  We were also reading another crime/ mystery novel, doing Sudoko/ crossword puzzles — spending time and energy on many other such superficial things, trying to pass the time.

 

Then a miracle happened.  We started getting phone calls, emails, messages, social media posts, etc. from friends and loved ones asking us how we were doing and sharing wonderfully uplifting and inspirational posts from others.  We began seeing people in other lands as being in the same boat we were in.  We began to see that there was more, much more, to sheltering in place than simply filling our time with activities that may be of limited value down the road if we, who are in the highest demographic for mortality from this virus, should shuffle off our mortal coil.

 

Our world will not be the same after we have safely traversed this crisis, I can guarantee that.  This crisis could last months.  How could we possibly return to business as usual once we are released from this bondage?  Could a slave willingly return to his servitude?  Could Nelson Mandella leave his imprisonment and not been driven to create a humane existence for his fellow South Africans?  Could John McCain not have been driven to become one of the most influential congressional leaders in modern government?  Or JFK to do all he did for the American people?

 

Wouldn’t it be miraculous for us to unshelter in place and return to our world with a heightened drive to continue making our world a place where we connect with each other, where we support each other, where we share meaning with each other, where we share love for each other?  Where we stop hating and killing each other because they are not like us?

 

We really are in the same boat, and that boat is in danger of sinking and drowning us all in a sea of pollution, and I’m not talking of just air pollution — air pollution, water pollution, pollution of racism, bigotry, violence, fear, misunderstanding, greed.  This new release from our bondage is perhaps the best opportunity the world has had in, perhaps, forever to begin anew, to start healing the world.  After only a week I am bored with making just my personal shelter more appealing;  I’m ready to make the shelter we are all in a better place.  It’s long overdue, don’t you think?

 

 

Covid-19’s Silver Lining

(and my epitaph)

Please read to the end.

 

On last night’s local news I heard a local city councilman, a self-described Millennial, called upon his fellow Millennials — in fact, all of his fellow humans, to do whatever we can to halt the spread of Covid-19, stressing the seriousness of this crisis and the need for immediate and effective action.  His remarks stimulated the idea in my head that the world is, at this moment, facing a future that is unique and destined to transform our lives forever.  Just take a look at how our lives are different from at any other time in history:  we are, by free-will or coercion, sheltering in our homes and committed to doing so for an uncertain amount of time; we have, in many cases, panicked and overstocked our pantries and storage spaces; cancelled all public concerts and shows or gatherings of more than 5 or 10 people; we have cancelled the NBA, XFL, NCAA, MLB seasons, in a world where sports are considered essential to life itself; a Chinese billionaire has pledged to send to the U.S. a million surgical masks and half a million Covid-19 test kits; the U.S. government is planning to send $1000 or more to each citizen as compensation for our voluntary quarantining.  Not your world as usual, is it?  And where will it go from here?

 

Interestingly enough, in China and northern Italy, air pollution has been reduced to the point where thousands of lives have already been saved that would have been lost to respiratory diseases (in response to the danger of the respiratory disease we are currently battling whole-heartedly).  Also interestingly, the world would never have submitted to the harsh measures we have undertaken to fight Covid-19 just to fight air pollution and climate change. (Who knew it would be so easy?)

 

What a strange new world we have found ourselves in.  We are doing things for each others’ wellbeing that we would not previously have contemplated doing.  We as a species seem to be undergoing a transformation.  Each and every one of us will undoubtedly be touched by the death or serious illness of a family member or friend.  What if we seized this time in our evolution to commit ourselves to continue to press forward in this movement toward a more caring, loving, supportive world?  We have come so far in only a few weeks!  How close might be the tipping point that would alter everything?  Are you up for the final push?

 

I remember, in the 1980s and 1990s, my volunteer days with a global organization committed to ending hunger in the world.  The Hunger Project’s source document compassionately spoke of the deaths of millions of people annually as a result of hunger.  Its proposed solution to ending hunger is creating the context in which that can occur.  In other words, the creation of The End of Hunger as an Idea Whose Time Has Come.  (As Victor Hugo said,”Nothing is so powerful as an idea whose time has come”.)

 

Humanity is, for the most part, currently acting as one during this crisis.  The opportunity has been created for us to transform our relationship not only to each other but also our relationship with the entire planet — to care for and nurture the world as a whole, each one doing whatever is in their power to do in order to bring that vision into reality, to create an idea whose time has come.  To quote The Hunger Project, “A person can die as evidence of the persistence of hunger and starvation, in which case that person’s life and death have been reduced to meaninglessness.  A person can die in the context of the end of hunger and starvation, and the context affords meaning — almost purpose — to that life and death.”

 

There is a sizeable chance that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in the U.S. will be infected.  I am in one of the age groups that is most at risk during this crisis, so I could easily be in the 2%-plus who don’t survive. Should that become a reality I offer my proposed epitaph:  “If my life has not made a difference in the world, please, God, may my death do so.”

 

Thank you for reading this far.  Now, please, don’t let this opportunity turn all the world’s deaths from this virus be meaningless.  Don’t let this opportunity to transform the world become wasted.  We’re so close!