CAN A PANDEMIC BRING US BACK TOGETHER?
“...we’ll learn to substitute human contact for endless consumption; maybe this is the kind of shock that might open a few eyes.”
By Elizabeth Lesser
Every Friday night for the past eight years or so, my son and daughter-in-law and our two grandsons come to our house for dinner. It’s a rather typical American family tradition—having dinner together once a week. Often, we’ll invite friends to join us, make it a potluck, play games. It’s become a well-worn ritual. But as I thought about this coming Friday, instead of wondering who to invite and what to make for dinner, I thought about “social distancing,” and
pondered things that I was embarrassed to admit, even to myself: What if the grandsons had picked up the Coronavirus at school and were silent carriers? Should I invite one of my friends who is dealing with cancer? We don’t want to infect her! And what if her husband—a lawyer who often argues cases in New York City courts is infected and doesn’t know it? I thought of other friends and all sorts of travel and work and health-related reasons why not to invite them. Hell, I could be carrying the
virus myself. My husband and I went to the movies the other night. Should we have done that? Should I just call off dinner?
Suddenly, instead of feeling anxious about the virus, as I have been for the past few weeks, I felt sad. I felt lonely. I thought of those people quarantined on a ship, or in a nursing home, or a town in Italy, or an apartment building in China. All of us longing for contact with the ones we love, the folks we enjoy, the people who need us. Instead of my usual confusion about how best to protect myself and my family, or my anger about the bungled governmental
response, or my fear for the local and world economies, I felt a tenderness toward all of us humans as we struggle with this new normal. I felt an odd sense of respect for the virus and what it was showing us about how we have been living, how we react to crisis, and what gifts may be hidden in the disruption, what wisdom might be gleaned......read more
