My hero
is Fred Rogers of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood. What I find
particularly compelling about him is that he crafted his way of living
independently. He obviously took strong cues from his faith, but on that
foundation, he built a beautifully lived life. Any one of us could
imitate how he behaved. It would be exceptionally hard, but doable. But
how many of us could invent a genuinely beautiful life from whole cloth as he
did? In one of his biographies, he told a story about his mother.
When young Fred saw scary things on the news, his mother would say to him,
“Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
Well,
there are scary things on the news. What is truly
extraordinary is that we are all helpers. Every one of us has risk
of a worst-case scenario, but in all likelihood for the vast majority of us,
COVID-19 will not make us seriously ill. We are all living in
isolation to protect the vulnerable. That is extraordinarily noble when you
think about it. Collectively, we are allowing the global economy to
falter and collapse for the same high purpose: to ease human suffering and loss
of life. The scope and breadth of this act of compassion has no
precedent in human history. If you look for the helpers, you need
not look far.
It is
easy to do the opposite. We can focus on those who refuse to isolate themselves
or engage in other behavior that risks the health and lives of
others. Those decisions may have serious consequences for the people
they encounter. They are a tiny minority by any standard. Because
of the way our media is structured (both news media and social media), those
stories will have dramatically exaggerated prevalence. Additionally, the human
mind is evolved to have a tendency toward negativity in order to protect us
from bad people and bad situations. The human mind is also evolved
to seek intimacy and community. The easiest, cheapest form of intimacy and
community is through anger. That kind of intimacy never lasts and doesn’t
support resilient happiness. It is short-sighted self-soothing - like
everything that we do even though we know it will bring us down. People who
invite anger are out there. It’s up to us whether their influence on us is
proportional and wise.
Much has
gone well. The seriousness of the virus was identified swiftly and
extraordinary measures to ‘flatten the curve’ were put in place very quickly
almost universally. Much has admittedly gone less well. One would have thought
every federal government around the world and every hospital and senior care
facility would have stockpiled protective gear for a pandemic. Will anger
about it in the midst of the pandemic do any genuine good? Will
retaliation afterward do any genuine good?
I have
been avoiding news and social media for several months. I find it is
a poisonous influence. Nowadays, I think its probably important to keep up with
current events, so I have been back. There is a lot of anger out
there. Or at least there appears to be a lot of anger out
there. Those who are consumed with anger, or who habitually seek
intimacy through anger, are out in full force. It probably seems vitally
important, righteous and justified to them. Anger always does. It is all
worse than useless. All these professional and amateur pundits are
managing to do is poison their own minds and the minds of those of us reading
their material.
There is
a sacred, liminal quality to this time. Much good is being done, and
much compassion is being shown. Maybe more importantly, much suffering
is occurring and many thousands of members of the human family will not survive the next few weeks and
months. We can use this time reflexively producing anger and
consuming it. Or we can try to embrace the inherent sanctity of this
moment.
Look for
the helpers.
Photo: Earthrise from the Moon
