Connection in a Disconnected World
It’s COVID19 time and we are often on our phones and computers yearning for CONNECTION IN A DISCONNECTED WORLD. We are watching videos and messaging. We are getting updates on the news, and even better we are finding new recipes, jokes, photos to share–all those things being about connection. We humans can only live and thrive if we have that.
But here’s the question, were we disconnected before the virus? Has the virus created ANY upside as each day brings us deeper into this? My answer would be yes, there is an upside, but it only happens if we can get out of our way, if we escape OUR WORLD and open ourselves to someone else’s. And there’s a word that describes that action. Can you guess what the word is?
SO THIS MORNING…I read this:
AT 5 A.M. I watched my mother being buried. I was in my living room, the event capatured on Face Time by my niece from her car as if she were on safari.
When the cemetery workers took their tools and walked away…ten masked members of my family—the legal limit—came out of their cars…and positioned themselves eight feet apart…I could scarcely identify them…After about 15 minutes they all retreated back to their cars…I saw it all unfold on my phone as if I were a voyeur. The same phone I use to send inane texts with emoji at the end…When it was over, meaning when I got disconnected (as I had been all along) I was still in my pajamas…
I cried reading that. I felt human, I felt connected to this daughter losing her mother. READING DISCOVERS CONNECTION IN A DISCONNECTED WORLD. This morning reading did that for me. Film does that too. Especially when a film makes you cry. You feel human. Your tears are washing you in your humanity.
DO YOU CRY?
Crying is good. Do our leaders cry? I know our nurses and doctors do. I’ve watched them cry on TV. I’ve seen their unspeakable sadness. But here’s a question: do some people pick a profession so that they can sit behind a big desk, making big decisions that eventually control what others can and cannot do? Does it help them stay away from thinking about others?
(Sure, there are good people in all professions. And they do have those big desks.) But instead of just checking a box to vote for someone: I WISH I COULD KNOW THEIR PERSONAL EXPECTATION AND OBJECTIVES. I wish I could trust that they won’t lie to me, that’s not all about power. That they have a soul.
Do the nurses and doctors have power during COVID 19? Yes, a lot, if “pronouncing” is power. But the very fact that our government is guilty of limiting their professional protective equipment, their PPE, is a way of saying: You aren’t as important or as powerful as you think. You are basically handmaidens and handmaidens only serve others. Well, MR. ROGERS WOULD CALL THEM “THE HELPERS”…
But that’s it, isn’t it. We are living in a time when we totally rely on people who help and serve others. But we are living in a time with a government that looks down on people who help and serve others. Damn.
Is there an upside? We have to find one. The only answer I can ever find is that word I’m constantly writing about, even harping about, the one I alluded to at the beginning of this post: EMPATHY!!
A QUESTION...
Why are some people able to withstand the current quarantine and others are just wild and YOU WON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO angry. WHY IS THAT? If you have an answer for me, please share it.
P.S. Sometimes I just search the net and find: “Sweet Home Chicago” Or “I-I’m so-o in love with you…” and I watch him up on some stage singing. Again I cry. Then tell myself: we’ll have someone like him again. This too shall pass.
Thanks to the LA TIMES and to Casey Cohen for sharing her story. Her mother died on April 17 of complications from COVID 19.
Artwork: PHOTO CREDIT: art work, Edvard Munch The Dance of Life
