First things first. It’s time to drop the pretenses.
In this age of the coronavirus and COVID-19 and 24/7 pandemic news coverage, it’s time to drop the facades that we’ve been living behind and admit that we just don’t know what comes next. It’s time to admit how frightened we are, however frightened that might be. And it’s time to reckon — both individually and collectively — with our vulnerability, and with the fundamental uncertainty that underlies our existence at such a time as this.
We’ve been doing our best to put a good face on things for so long now, putting our best foot forward and trying to show the world how powerful we are, how strong and how impervious to pain and the vicissitudes of life. But, although the time for genuine strength and fortitude and deep determination may be upon us, the time for putting on a good outward show — for trying to convince everyone we’ve got everything figured out — that time is done.
These are times for hard truths, not comforting platitudes, and more and more of us are awakening to this reality. The voices of vain reassurance are starting to sound hollow and empty to the regular people who are being asked to confront, head on, the realities of COVID-19 and its dramatic effects on cities and towns and countries and families and economies. At a moment in time when everything is canceled, there is no longer any room for ordinary people to ignore the grim reality, the drastic and sudden change to what so many have been calling “the new normal.”
Most of all, perhaps, it is a time for honesty, to drop the collective BS and try, insofar as we are able, to be honest with one another. Honest about our hopes. Honest about our fears. Honest about the fact that we’re scared to admit that we just don’t know where all of this is headed.
We’re scared for ourselves, and we’re scared for the people we love. And, increasingly, we’re scared for the people — sometimes halfway across the globe — whose lives we have come to realize are, in so many ways, just like our own. It’s not that hard after all, at the end of the day, to see ourselves in the quarantined citizens of Wuhan, holed up in their homes while waiting for better days, waiting for a safer sun to rise.
Just like them, we wait for the restaurant and grocery deliveries. Just like them, we put on the television or Netflix and let it transport us somewhere far away. Just like them, we hold close to the love of our families, as we hope against hope that the virus will spare those we hold most dear, even as we realize how selfish such a thought — such a prayer — really is, in the light of so much suffering.
Perhaps most of all, it’s a time to embrace our shared vulnerability and deep interconnectedness, and a time to cultivate compassion for all those with whom we share this little spinning globe and this brief span of time that makes up a human life. All that we have, and all that we are, is small when seen from the vastness of the universe. Our little lives evanesce, further and further with the widening perspective, until they hardly register, until they can hardly be seen at all.
And yet, within each one of these little lives, lies an infinite ocean of beauty and depth, an endless sea of belief and dreams and hope, fueled by the expectation of joy and belonging, of illumination and love.
So many days in my own life, I have remained silent, not wanting to rock the boat or draw too much attention to myself. So many nights, I have lain awake wondering what it would take to catalyze the deep, deep longing in my heart to live a life of honesty and truth. Now we face, in a very real sense, the end of the world as we know it, and all that pretense now seems less like a courtesy and more like a waste of precious time.
We are all living, for now at least, in the valley of the shadow of death, and most of us — if we’re honest with ourselves — are indeed afraid, no matter how strong or resolute our faith, no matter how great our hope in some world to come. For now, we’re trying to figure out how this world could change so fast. We’re wondering what we could have done differently — both collectively and individually — and what we might do differently now to protect the things and the people we hold most dear.
Right now, we’re all vulnerable. And, despite our social distancing, that vulnerability connects us. Wherever you are in the world today, I wish you and yours health, and also some hope — to hold you and comfort you and give you strength for all the days to come.
Photo Credit: Luis Del Río Camacho on Unsplash