As I write this, the President of the United States has declared, perhaps belatedly, that the Novel Coronavirus, COVID-19, is indeed a National Emergency.
While we hear, minute by minute, of cancelations and postponements of events across the country, from school plays to conferences, fundraisers to March Madness, my daughter sits home from college on spring break. She will not be returning to school for the balance of the semester as her university, along with many others, prepare to deliver traditional face-to-face classes, like Organic Chemistry, in an online format. An exercise, I imagine, that is nothing short of a monumental undertaking for a traditional university.
Our eight-year-old foster daughter is home from her elementary school, as well. She will be home for at least the next two weeks, as her school district considers delivering formative, K-12 education at a distance. Although the school is closed, those in need of free lunch will continue to be able to go to school to ensure no child goes hungry.
Her five-year-old sister and three-year-old brother still attend their daycare, while their foster parents await word if that institution will follow suit and close its doors.
My wife, who works for a European airline, sits idle in an empty airport lounge as the company considers how it is to react to Trump’s unilateral decision to not allow European travelers into the U.S. for the next month. I am sure courses will be taught in the future about this foreign-policy blunder, but that is not the subject of today. The fact is, she, her colleagues and the customers the serve around the world are in limbo.
As for me, instead of making the hour drive into my DC-office, I have taken to suffering my short, one-story commute to my home office on a daily basis. I communicate with the world through cyber-space, while I watch that jumpy line on the monitor that serves as an indicator of the health of the global economy, as it edges up and plunges down with every new tweet and utterance from the numerous pundits that clog the airwaves. I wonder why these characters have not self-quarantined themselves along with the rest of us, but the thought occurs that perhaps they are not actually human.
Today, I leave my home for a late lunch, taking advantage of my expulsion from the communal office, to commune instead at the local grocery store, albeit at a safe distance. The shoppers, few and far between, are greeted by sparsely populated shelves. A lonely bag of Lima beans sits in the asile-long freezer. The disinfectant wipes and toilet paper are long gone. Milk and cheese are hard to come-by, while bananas and fresh meat are virtually non-existant in this dystopian universe where I find myself. Interestingly, the Cheetos and their ilk are in large supply. Apparently Cheetos are not items that the masses consider as necessary as we near the potential end of the world. To satisfy my growing hunger, I grab a bento box of as of yet plentiful sushi, hand-made by a be-masked Japanese chef.
I return home to enjoy my Rainbow Roll and am greeted by my college-aged son, who has started a new job this week at the new fast-food restaurant that has opened by our home. Amazingly, the entrepreneurial franchise owner is still hiring in these uncertain times. This is where the impact of how people are reacting to the spectre of a virus, which the World Health Organization has declared a pandemic, gets interesting.
My son, still smelling of fried foods, reports how busy the new venture is. Kids from the idled high school overwhelmed the lobby all day long placing the images of their parents’ credit cards contained in their smart phones upon the check-out device to get their fill of salty fries and creamy shakes. My son then descends to his man-cave in the basement to enjoy his own, well-earned perk of working in fast food—a free pimple-inducing lunch.
As I contemplate what he has reported, I leave my fortress once more to retrieve the foster children from daycare on this beautiful Friday afternoon. I notice something I rarely see in our DC exurb, which is primarily populated by hyper-focused executives, helicopter parents and an abundance of largely unnecessary SUVs .
People were outside!
Couples strolling hand-in-hand listening to the song birds returning as spring begins to bloom. Neighbors I barely know and haven’t seen in months out walking their furry friends. Pasty-skinned dads frolicking with their children in the, usually-empty, green open spaces. Kids playing tag and riding bikes without a care on the world. Soccer moms power-walking and most certainly complaining about the cancellation of the PTO bake-sale. Teenagers walking in groups to the aforementioned fast food establishment to get their evening fill of grease.
In short, what I was witnessing was something that I feared had left our shores long ago. I was seeing community.
People, certainly mindful of our new, if temporary, reality are outside, throwing caution to the wind, and enjoying spending time with their friends and families. With nowhere to rush to they are enjoying a respite from their formerly frantic lives. With the major sporting events cancelled and entertainment venues closed, there are fewer distractions for us to escape from the opportunity to spend time with one another.
After I retrieve our little ones, I return home to find my young adult children in the kitchen, listening to music streamed by Alexa, talking to each other about plans for the future, and preparing gnocchi from scratch. An unimaginable scene just a few days before.
While many think perhaps this disruption in our daily routines is going overboard, an abundance of caution is indeed warranted. While relatively few in the U.S. have actually been diagnosed with the virus, it certainly has the potential to spread. This somewhat-voluntarily imposed quarantine will likely prove to help minimize or at least isolate any potential spread.
Many may bemoan the loss of perceived joyful things, like watching men earn millions of dollars to wander around a golf course and hit little balls. However, what if this experience actually causes us…no…allows us to reassess what is important? What if we actually spend this time getting to know our families? Our neighbors? Our friends?
My employer has sent me a note. They encourage me and my colleagues who can to work from home. They say to limit travel, hold virtual meetings, find innovative ways to carry-on. If one feels ill, to see a doctor, stay home, get well. If one is a single parent and needs to care for a child home from school, or an ill loved-one, to do it. They promise that the job is secure, insurance is covered, to take care of ourselves and those close to us.
I realize, of course, that I am fortunate to have a job that provides this security and freedom. Many, like my son, still need to report for duty and increasing his risk to exposure. He does not care.
Many will struggle and lose their jobs during this crisis, like my wife for one. Even-so, the airline she works for, hard hit by this pandemic, has promised to do what it can to help employees, provide as much work as possible, and maintain benefits even if unpaid leave is required. And the government is promising to help too. Once containment is achieved, she and others will rally.
But consider this. What if employers, and the government for that matter, always talked like this? What if, instead of constantly seeking ways to squeeze every last dime from unsuspecting customers to maximize quarterly profits, companies actually kept in mind that humans, with lives, are their employees…and their customers are humans too? What if caring about your employees was actually embraced as the only way to do business?
What if instead of commuting an hour to work to sit in a little box to stare at a computer monitor in a sterile office building, being interrupted and called into meeting after pointless meeting to re-hash the same subject over-and-over again to take inconsequential micro-steps, people were actually trusted to work from home? To find innovative ways to get work done…at their own rhythm? To come up with innovative solutions free of the committee-think, idea- killing machine? What if companies stopped wasting money and precious natural resources leasing buildings, and making people fly across the country to attend an hour-long meeting, and commercializing everything to the point of absurdity?
What if people could earn a decent living, without the time-wasting, soul-crushing commute, clogging up the over-stretched arteries and crumbling infrastructure that feed into the Petri dishes of the central business district? What if we could cut all those carbon emissions caused by selfishly driving ourselves to work, and we simply stayed home? What if people could actually achieve meaningful work-life balance?
It is wonderful the schools are providing free-lunch during this shut-down, but has anyone asked why we need it? Why on earth…in the richest country on this earth…do we have so many hungry children? What if we could figure out a way to ensure every family had enough food that free-lunch became a thing of the past? What if we could achieve some measure of food independence for every man, woman and child? What if executives earned a few million less, and workers earned a few thousand more? What if all those who put in a decent day’s work, brought home a paycheck big enough to live on comfortably? What if Amazon fully replaced the out-dated box stores and strip malls, shopping centers and grocery stores that mare our landscape? What if we brought back the milkman?
What if we stopped caring about the latest antics of the Kardashians, and we focused on the needs of our neighbors? Instead of only celebrating Hallmark holidays, we celebrated every day? Instead of forgetting about today because we are so worried about tomorrow, what if we actually spent our time enjoying the present without a need of anxiety about the future?
What if we not only took the time to go outside during a manufactured slow-down caused by a global health crisis, but instead we went outside all the time? What if we relearned how to appreciate nature? What if we took the time to listen to the birds and smell the flowers? What if we spent less time in our cubicales and in front of the television, and more time remembering how to commune with nature, appreciating her beauty and abundance? What if we allowed our children to get their hands dirty so perhaps they would not be as susceptible to pandemics? What if we grew our own food so we wouldn’t have to worry about empty grocery store shelves?
What if this crisis allowed us to re-think education? What if instead of reporting to a building everyday to go through a routine consisting of 40% assembly-line learning and 60% ritualistic babysitting, we actually explored self-paced, individualized, virtual learning? What if the traditional school building became a center of innovation where small groups meet to work together on real-life issues? What if children were trusted and empowered to guide their own learning? What if, instead of warehousing old people in nursing homes, our elders could live with dignity among us in multigenerational homes serving as a role-model for the younger generation? What if instead of taking a weekly trip to the old-folks community center, our elders took a daily walk to the innovation center and shared their knowledge and experience co-learning with the students?
What if universities quit spending millions of dollars to build the best of everything? Quit recruiting the publish or perish professors who care little about educating the next generation? Quit replacing education with sports entertainment? Quit trying to out compete the school down the road, while driving up the price of tuition? What if virtual learning could replace those monolithic institutions that teach our business leaders greed? What if service-learning truly became a thing? And apprenticeships came back? And one could become a lawyer if they passed the bar without attending a day of university? And practical practice was married with theoretical thought? What if students did not have to graduate with a mountain of debt crushing them as they begin their adult lives?
What if the silver lining of this practice-run of dealing with a relatively harmless global pandemic, is the opportunity to rethink what is possible? To learn more about the natural world, and perhaps our own true nature as humans inhabiting this planet? To do away with the inefficiencies that have become mind-numbing routine in our society? To actually take action to reduce the effects of climate change?
What if we all took time to talk to each other and make gnocchi?
What if this is actually the best thing that has happened to our society in quite a while?
Earthwise Journal 