Dear Fellows of the ‘Essence of Water’,
I hope that you are all well, staying safe and making the Herculean effort — as I am — not to touch your face. In this time of social distancing, as governments everywhere are taking extraordinary measures to ‘flatten the curve’, I know that we are all affected by this new virus. Maybe your daily routine has changed. Maybe your level of general anxiety has peaked. I know, mine has. Yet, I cannot help but be glad that we — humanity — are suddenly forced to realize the depth of our interdependencies.
It is now very clear that we are all part of a ‘Greater than Us’ — a global society — for better or for worse. I wish we could have come to understand our common destiny without the need for pain and death. I guess it is part of our human tendencies to care overwhelmingly for what directly affects us, as individuals and families. Maybe we needed a rude awakening to accept the obvious. I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t care about yourselves. Please do take precautions and prepare for the contingency that we might be asked to socially distance ourselves for longer than we might wish.
Yet, as you adapt to this new lifestyle devoid of public life, please take a minute to contemplate the countless links that tie us all together. Please realize that those connections are the very ‘essence’ of our civilization. The march of History has been one long thrust toward greater integration, more communication, tighter reliance on each other. We have grown, as a society, through all that we share with each other.
The economy is merely the easiest way to measure our degree of integration; the proof that we have been performing ‘collective action’ all along. The act of ‘going to work’ was lived and understood merely in terms of strict individualism or the care of one’s kin; to bring back ‘bacon’ for one’s family. Nonetheless, we were involved in a holistic process, where each specialized job contributed to what was being produced in aggregate. If some individuals fail to find a job, or fall into addiction, or steal (legally or not), these behaviours affect the whole. I don’t know how the economic recovery will unfold — but it will happen.
We — humanity — are a whole. We are physical beings and we need material resources to survive. But we are so much more than the sum of our physical needs, wants and desires. We are ultimately social beings.
As we are finding ourselves ‘socially isolated’, I hope that we acutely feel the absence of our fellow humans. I hope that we realize that we used to take a lot of our interpersonal relationships for granted. I want us to miss their presence, from the grocer to one’s dearest friend, so we can remember how important we are for each other.
Now, it is interesting to notice that our society has a clear alternative to avoiding social contact: we are shifting to a virtual life. This is far from being a new trend. Again, I hope that we will realize that ‘virtual presence’ is a useful tool for having meetings without the carbon footprint of transportation, but that all types of video chat cannot replace a human presence. I hope that we will realize that there is a world beyond our computer screens; a vast and beautiful and scary world in which, to live fully, we need to live mindfully.
I hope this time is about learning the basics:
1) We are all in this together. Earth is a very small place when something ‘big’ happens.
2) Success — the containment of the virus — requires working together: it requires subsiding selfish needs below the greater good.
3) Human life is precarious; we should have never believed otherwise.
Arguably, we should never have ‘lived paycheck to paycheck’, unable to absorb a sudden decrease in income. We shouldn’t have pursued a ‘just in time’ policy to emergency supplies. In the years of plenty, we should have been grateful, not dulled into expecting that economic expansion would continue forever.
At all times, we should be thinking of what really, truly matters. Is it the last version of a popular tech gadget? Or is it food? Or toilet paper, really?
Take this time in isolation to reflect on your life. Are you happy? What can you do to generate more ‘well-being’ into your life? It might only be to talk more honestly with the people you live with, with those you love. For the key question that will eventually emerge is: what will you do when this is all over? Will you simply go back to the way you were? Or will you have learned something about yourself? About what you want out of life? About what societal life is all about?
I hope that we will learn from this tragedy. What — I am not yet sure. But for now, I beg you to not forget of the joy of being in each other’s presence, of sharing a meal together, of laughing or even caring for each other. Care, that is the operative word.