We are on a bridge of uncertainty and do not know what is on the other side. Mr. Rogers told us to look for the helpers. We are learning we are the helpers.
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Admit it, you’re not sure of anything right now. Okay, maybe YOU are sure of something but most of us aren’t, and a lot of us would not agree with your version of things because even we introverts are getting a little stir crazy and a good argument would cut through the fog of not knowing. There is a desire to violate.
For me that would be something like drinking a coke. Not really blasphemous, only slightly harming myself. No god will destroy the world because I drank a coke or will turn me into a pillar of salt because I looked at the destruction.
Okay, it’s not a proven destruction yet. We don’t really know what it is, and not many of us believe there is a vengeful god wreaking havoc on us because we don’t fit its description of obedient servants. We did this on our own and mythology does not serve us well.
What is real is that only a few people are overarching leaders with sharp minds, compassionate souls, and the ability to pull best actions out of scientific facts—and we need such people now. (Saluting you, Dr. Fauci.)
Our administration is not equipped—mentally, emotionally, morally—to deal with a pandemic. They stumble blind in a maze of ignorance, arrogance, and surprise that a deadly inconvenience is disrupting their presumptions they made America great again. They have put us in peril.
We are on a bridge of uncertainty and do not know what is on the other side. Mr. Rogers told us to look for the helpers. We are learning we are the helpers.
We have become creative, turning to our friends and neighbors, and returning to ourselves—some of us perhaps going through the pains (and joys) of self-discovery and taking a fearless moral inventory for the first time.
We reach out and have come closer to others by not being able to touch each other. We slow down, turn to the arts, and try not to violate others, not to slice through the fog as a defense against not knowing.
We do not know when it will end, we do not know how many will die, we do not know how many others will be weakened, we do not know who is in trouble, who will disappear, who will have food for themselves and their families and who will not, who will be destitute, who will wake and say “I am not who I thought I was.”
We do not know if lessons will be learned and kept that will change how we live, if we will stop destroying our beloved earth, if we will be kinder to others. We do not know.
Some people are buying guns as though a virus can be shot. Who do they think will attack them? I sense these are the same people who believe in a vengeful god, and that monsters exist in all people and that deprivation will make those monsters rise against them for their food and toilet paper.
Still, it is the doctors, and nurses, and garbage collectors, and grocery suppliers that lead—and the food banks and fruit and vegetable pickers. At great risk, at great risk. They do best actions with the facts before them.
May we all do the same. May we learn—actually feel—the connected rhythms of life that include viruses and fears along with love and blossoming. May we endure and embrace and sort though to what serves best.
We will create what is on the other side of the bridge, using or ignoring the lessons we learn now. We can join hands safety. We can create harmonies that hold and stabilize through troubles.
If we do not, . . . oh, well, just one more planet in an unending cosmos that either knows itself or does not, that gives birth and absorbs death with startling nonchalance.
Elephants cry. These large beautiful beasts cry. Somehow that is relevant. I don’t know how.