Most Friday nights my wife and I eat dinner at the same place. We sit at the same table with the same waiter and order the same cocktails, the same entrees. We’ve been doing this long enough that they know us. They know our habits and have been known to call and ask if we’re coming if tables begin to run short. We’re not alone in this. There are many people who frequent this particular place regularly and have been doing so for years. And so, it came as a surprise on a recent evening when walking up to the front door we encountered another regular patron berating the manager for their policy requiring masks. This was not a reasoned argument for or against the effectiveness of wearing masks against the spread of coronavirus. This was closer to a toddler’s temper tantrum thrown by a grown man who, by all outward appearances is professionally successful if not well adjusted, verbally abusing a hospitality worker as if it was his God-given right.
This event has stuck in my mind. I keep replaying it over and over again and there are two aspects of this altercation that really bother me. The first, quite simply, is the aspect of economic class. Beginning with the manager, we have a relatively young woman working in the food service industry. I don’t know whether this is a career or simply a job for her, but I do know her to be hardworking and conscientious. Still, she can’t be making $15, maybe $20 an hour. On the morning in question did she wake, drink her coffee, and remind herself that she loves her job, that she has been called to a vocation of service to others? Or, perhaps, did she remind herself that despite the risk of exposure to a virus that has crippled the world’s developed economies, she needs this job to pay the rent and finding another job in the midst of the pandemic is nigh on impossible?
What of our patron in this story? Did he wake that day, drink his coffee, and remind himself that he is a member of an interconnected, global community and words and actions matter? Did he think about his receding hairline, his potbelly, and his waning supply of little blue pills and decide to go bully someone to soothe his own fragile ego? Did he think at all?
Many of us, particularly those of us who can work from home or are otherwise insulated from the economic effects of the pandemic, have completely lost sight of millions of people who daily have to make the choice between putting their health at risk or losing their employment and going hungry. “Essential services” don’t just happen. The righteous indignation of a few months ago when grocery store shelves ran low on toilet paper seemed to completely miss the fact that someone had to stock those shelves. Someone had to drive that truck. Someone had to work in that paper mill. Health care workers, teachers, law enforcement, pizza delivery guys, wait staff, landscapers, hairdressers…the list is nearly endless, of people who cannot work from home…people who get paid to be out in the world, socially distanced or not. But some of us are acting like we’re better or different than those people. We’re acting like they’re less than we are. We’re acting as if we’re entitled to continue our lives, unchanged. We’re acting as if they don’t exist.
Which brings me to the second thing I’ve been thinking about and the real point of this essay. It seems to me that among the hundreds of thousands of lives lost and millions of people impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, another victim has been our own collective kindness. I know the cynical among us will argue the world was never all that kind of a place to begin with and that may well be true, at least on a societal level. Still, it has been my experience that most people, most of the time are kind. But this is one of things that it seems this damnable virus is taking from us.
I will routinely remind my teenage children, words mean things. And so, I find the term “social distancing” to be both laughably wrong and painfully correct. Though I do not know the origin of the phrase, we now know it means to interact with people from a distance that minimizes the probability of one person spitting upon another, through any of the normal means. Instead, I feel that we’ve collectively interpreted the phrase literally, allowing a chasm to open between us and the rest of the human race. Out of fear for our personal safety and that of our loved ones, we now shy away from handshakes and hugs, from physical touch and physical proximity. And I believe we’re losing or have already lost a bit of community, even a bit of our own humanity.
Masks, as important as they are during this time only seem to exacerbate the problem, providing a physical barrier in addition to the metaphysical one. I’ve been impressed how many people are able to use the mask as some kind of isolating force field like their car windshield or the parapets to their cranial fortress, pretending as if you’re not there. And yet, the masks are important and…don’t miss this…are not about you. I have lost all patience with people who refuse to wear masks, claiming them as inconvenient. Well of course their inconvenient. Tough shit. So are condoms. And seat belts. And toothpaste. And voting. And work. Lots of things in this world are inconvenient and yet we do them because they’re important. Sometimes we do them because they’re important to us and sometimes because they’re important to the safety and well being of others. Masks as it turns out are important to the safety and well being of others and, while I respect your right to not wear a mask, is it too much to ask that you also respect my right to not be involuntarily infected by a potentially life threatening, highly infection virus because you’re too selfish to be inconvenienced? By the way, for whatever reason the mask thing has become political and somewhat correlated to anti-vaxers and people that don’t “believe” in climate change, as if that’s a matter of faith…but I digress.
So, what of kindness and its loss? Kindness is, I believe, a most human quality. We have within us the capability to see another and be moved to empathy, compassion, and action. It occurs in the moment, however brief, when we see what Martin Buber calls the “Thou” in another. We see them wholly. We see them completely. We experience a connection with them on an emotional and spiritual level that spans age, race, gender, creed, or economic class. To me, kindness becomes the kinetic manifestation of our human connection with another, but sadly the ability to connect can be lost through atrophy. Our instinct to turn inward, away from the dangers of the world, weakens our sense of humanness, our sense of community, and our ability to see others. It erodes our capacity for kindness. Our inability to hug aging parents in mental care facilities, to shake the hand of a new acquaintance…our revulsion at touching the shopping cart handle after another, at holding open a door, or being within touching distance of another, these are all small, accumulating losses that build callouses on our hearts.
Post 9/11 there was much chatter in the US that said a reduction of our personal and national freedoms was a victory for the terrorists. Whether you believe that rhetoric or not, in a similar way I see the deterioration of kindness in the world as a victory for COVID-19. If we find a vaccine for the virus but our communities are more fractured, more polarized, more divisive, what have we achieved? More than any other species on earth, human beings long for connection with others. We need physical touch and emotional and spiritual bonds with others, in order to thrive. Yes, we can subsist without those things, sometimes for long periods of time. But that is not how we are made and it is not how we live our best lives.
Every major religion of which I am aware has something akin to Jesus’s encouragement in his Sermon on the Mount that, “however you want people to treat you, so treat them.” (Matt 7:12) It seems to me that the fight against coronavirus remains in very early stages while many of the changes to our way of life wrought by virus may remain far into the future. It is my hope that we all begin to soften a little. That we begin to reclaim parts of our humanity, our community, and our kindness. We’re all in this life together and, whether we realize it or not, are all interconnected, interrelated, and interdependent.
As I close my first essay on the Essence of Water, I would only remind you that words matter, we’re all in this together, and kindness wins.
Nice essay, Matt.
Thanks, Mark.