What Do We Do Now?

I felt all the bitterness drip from my body.

The anger,

The envy,

The separateness.

Like black suit drained from my being,

Stripped from my bones,

The longer I sat with myself.

The further I got from New York,

The longer I spent with my parents,

The more news that I watched.

The gravity of the situation weighed on my chest,

Stripping away the superficial.

The boxes we sort ourselves into,

The titles,

Achievements,

Accomplishments,

Party affiliations,

These badges we wear to ascertain that we are different than our neighbor.

Dissolved,

Erased.

And the stillness of being,

The labels of doing,

Fall from our identity.

Every time I read the news,

My heart hurts a little more.

Our collective suffering,

The unemployed,

The shuttering businesses,

The sick,

The dying.

But maybe this heartache is really not an ache at all,

But the heart splintering open,

Warming the iciness of separation as we begin to feel the pain of our human collective.

Maybe this collective pain that we feel is an awakening to our shared experience,

Not just of neighborhoods or states or countries,

But of all humankind.

And it's so easy to feel so powerless as we sit isolated in our homes,

Unable to touch and love and support our people in the way we know how.

If we can't show up,

Roll up our sleeves and work alongside each other,

How can we lift each other?

But I think there's something we can do.

Over the course of our lives,

Think of the ways that energy has been transferred to you.

Call to mind the people who have served you food.

What is food if not energy?

The calorie in its simplest,

A measure of energy.

Think of the people who have provided you care for your health,

Warmth,

Nurturing,

Healing.

Think of the people who have provided you care for your health,

Nurturing,

Healing.

Is that not energy?

And now these people are beloved friends in the food industry,

Health care industry,

Service industry.

They need our love,

Our energy poured back to them.

Can you remember the last meal at a restaurant for before this all happened?

Can you go back and revisit that moment in your mind?

Can you call into your memory the face of the person who served you?

Can you close your eyes now and invite them to sit across the table from you,

Sitting across this table?

Can you pull the warmth in your heart up out of your body and send it to them?

Let loving kindness wash over this person who once fed you.

And can you say to them,

May you be happy,

May you be healthy,

May you live with ease?

Can you remember that food that you ate that day?

And can you think of the chef,

The line cooks who created that food?

Can you think of the people who grew that food?

Can you hold them in your hearts?

And can you say to them,

May you be happy,

May you be healthy,

May you live with ease?

Can you say this to all the people on this earth?

Can you say it to our earth?

Similarly,

Can you remember the last person who cared for you,

Your last doctor's appointment or operation or check-in?

Do you remember the nurse who saw you?

Can you remember the face of the person who checked you in for your appointment?

Can you imagine the people who cleaned the office,

Who rolled the bandages,

Who stocked the gloves?

Can you say to them all,

May you be happy,

May you be happy,

May you live with ease?

Can you imagine the people who cleaned the office,

Who may you be happy,

May you be healthy,

May you live with ease?

Can you think of the caregivers outside of that office in all the corners of the country?

Can you think of all the caretakers,

The nurses,

The doctors,

The health care workers,

The entire world?

And can you hold this entire ecosystem of caregivers in your heart,

Each of them pouring their love and energy into our sick and our weary and our dying?

Can you pour your own life energy into our collective humanity,

All of the beings on this planet?

Can you spread that warm light of loving kindness around our Earth that is hurting so deeply?

I had read once that in the course of a day,

We interact with 27 people on average.

Stuck in my childhood home,

I interact with three,

My mom,

My dad,

And myself.

But in my mind and my heart space,

I take the spare energy within me,

This capacity for connection and love and peace and grace,

Space that has been freed as my obsession with progress and productivity has quieted.

And in this capacity for connection,

I send warm loving kindness energy to those people who might need it,

Those people who have touched me in my life,

Those people whose faces I can recall,

Those people I may have passed by on the street or sat next to on an airline,

Those people I have yet to meet.

I hover over these people in my mind,

Sending loving kindness energy out,

Even in isolation.

And I no longer feel so alone.

I think of the past epidemics throughout history.

In 1918,

I was in the hospital with my mom.

And I was in the hospital with my dad.

And I was in the hospital with my mom.

And I think of the past epidemics throughout history in 1918 and centuries ago,

And I wonder what that might have been like to be so ill and to truly believe the world is ending,

To know nothing else exists out there except your community and your reality.

I know I take for granted the modern mobility we have to fly to other parts of the world,

Brought the far corners of the world into my awareness.

But in past pandemics before education and travel were more accessible,

Did they have any reason to believe they weren't alone?

They were not yet aware of the thread that ties all human beings together.

It had not been materialized in a social network.

I think of what social media is doing for us today.

At its best it's used for what it was actually intended for,

To share information and connect us across time and geography.

Yes,

This situation is incredibly dire and scary,

But we know we are not going it alone.

We know that the entire world is not ending.

We see our sisters and our brothers in China,

South Korea,

Italy,

All around the world moving through this same thing we are.

And some of them are dancing,

Singing,

Making art,

Making memes,

Being still.

And in spite of all the suffering,

Don't you feel connected to our collective humanity?

We have been sprinting on our individual treadmills of productivity,

Blinders on,

Relentless in pursuit of our individual achievement.

If this pandemic has done one thing,

It has brought those conveyor belts to slow.

And for some,

To a complete stop.

As my own feet slap the pavement of the path around the pond and the metro park I've been running around,

It's become my daily release from this lead blanket of anxiety.

I thought about this metaphorical treadmill of production.

Some of us were able to gracefully step off the treadmill.

Others were jolted,

Slammed to the ground,

Knocked down onto our knees.

Our hands find the ground.

May we be grounded by this.

May we move slow,

Be heavy.

After all,

This is over because it will be over.

May we ask ourselves and challenge ourselves,

How will we be changed?

If we get back on our treadmills,

Are we going to put our blinders on again?

Or are we going to help those unable to help themselves along?

Are we going to slow down?

For the only thing worse than this happening is this happening in vain.

For us not being awakened by it and made better through it.