pandemics, panic, empathy, oh my! or what do we owe to each other?

this is about coronavirus, yes, but it's also not about coronavirus. it's about how thoughtful we are, and how we treat each other. it's about how we build a better world.

“This is my favorite part of the week.”

“Why Saturday? Do you like how busy the store is?”

“No, not that. This is the only day of the week I work here. I work on Wall Street. I work here on Saturdays.”

“Why?”

“Just because I love it. I love talking to people. I like the vibe of this place. I like how they treat people.”

Three weeks ago at Trader Joe’s I bonded with the cashier, named Sindy, over climate justice, her appreciation for my bringing my own tote bags, and all of the good still left in the world. When she told me that she works a high-powered job in Manhattan and yet chooses to work at the store on Saturdays, not because she needs the money, but because she likes to give back to people in a more personal way, my mosaic face cracked into a wide smile. What a wonderful thing. It was one of my favorite interactions I’ve had recently, because it was so unexpected. It was one of those things that reminds me why I’ve built the habits I’ve built.

Let me explain.

You see, it’s 10 am on a Saturday morning at Trader Joe’s and We Built This City by Starship is blasting through my headphones. I pick up my staples: oatmeal, soup ingredients, avocados, hummus. I go to the register. Every Saturday morning, or Friday evening, or Wednesday midday when I grocery shop, right before I step up to pay, I take care to take my earphones out and place them gently around my neck. There is a human here who I should treat like a human. I know, having worked in the service industry, but also just from being a human, that it’s what I’d want.

I look the person at the cash register in the eyes. Sometimes their name is Olive. They have an eyebrow piercing and glossy lips and dark skin that their dark green shirt complements well. Sometimes her name is Larice, who inquires about the mason jar of food I’m carrying around, and swaps favorite recipes with me. Sometimes it’s a person who doesn’t answer my questions or respond to my comments at all. They are tired and it’s been a long week of putting on a face. And that’s alright.

All of this to say: I have rules about how I treat people. Rules about how I pay attention to people. Ultimately, though, they’re merely mindsets and habits I want to embody to make people feel more human. Things like complimenting people on something they’re wearing every time I speak with someone—never something physical, that they didn’t pick out or have choice in. Things like making sure to learn how to pronounce someone’s name the right way the first time I meet them. Things like taking my headphones off so someone knows I am present, making eye contact, trying to make conversation even if it’s awkward, unless someone signals they clearly want silence. I am intentional in how human I am to others.

Perhaps it’s because I have been made to feel un-human. Alien. Less than—by so many people.

And though I know it often hasn’t been intentional, and I know I’ve made others feel this way, too, before, because it is the most human thing we could do to each other—I know that every glance, every gesture, every word, every tone of voice, every action communicates something. What, exactly? In its simplest form, every little thing we do communicates to someone else what we think that person deserves. And whether we like it or not, we are personal beings, and we inherently feel, often if not always, that others’ treatment of us is a reflection of what we deserve. This isn’t true, of course. But that doesn’t mean it’s not what many of us have internalized.

For weeks now, I’ve been keeping track of the panic ensuing and precautions being taken because of coronavirus. This week, I’ve extensively reported on it. As someone with OCD and anxiety, it’s hard not to let something like this freak me out. It takes all of the energy in my body to think logically—to know I probably won’t die if I take the subway, or if I miss a spot washing my hands somehow. After all, I’ve been preparing for this kind of pandemic my whole life by obsessively washing my hands. Instead of using my energy to panic, however, I’ve been trying hard to divert it—to convert the panic, as if through a Rube Goldberg Machine in my brain that swings panic from one contraption to another until it becomes empathy. I know this is not easy for most people. Panic is a bodily response, and we’re hardwired for it to keep us alive.

Despite my own predisposition to panic, though, the COVID-19 panic has reminded me to think clearly and critically about what we owe to each other. Pandemics tend to cause people to go into hyper-individualist mode. Fear mongering is literally derived from the term “monger” which means to sell—to sell fear. Because someone always profits. You’ve seen the news stories and tweets about all of the people buying up all the medical equipment and the face masks and the hand soap and the water, leaving none for anyone else who might need it. The people who have chosen to go on vacation anyway, because, hey, they know they’ll be fine, as long as they’re protecting themselves (many of my friends have chosen to travel anyway, and I honestly feel really conflicted about it).

But then that’s exactly the point. We are all responsible for ourselves and only ourselves. And yet, in many ways, we are also responsible for one another. We shouldn’t be arm wrestling. We should all be on a big team sport—like soccer or hockey.

I keep a lot of photos on my wall of most of the people I love, or have loved, if I have photos of them. The collection is evergrowing. When I have a hard time, or even just on days when I feel very grateful to be alive, I look at their smiling faces I’ve captured and remember the people who have paid it forward to me in ways they maybe didn’t realize at the time, because they loved me or continue to love me—the people who I owe everything to.

As someone who grew up being shown very little empathy, I loved The Series of Unfortunate Events. The books, all 13 of which are still on my shelf, are all about the three Baudelaire orphans whose parents die mysteriously one day. The series explores how they fend for themselves but also how they’re treated horribly by adults as they try to investigate their parents’ deaths and the strange events surrounding all of it. The books are, on the surface at least, about the ways the people in their lives continue to fail them, which is why I thought I liked it as a kid, because I could relate. What I didn’t realize until later in life when I went back to the books was this: yes, the book is about how adults are wrong and hurtful and how good-hearted children who want to make the world a better place will prevail. But the books are also about what we owe to each other—about building community, about trying to get people to understand that we are all responsible for helping each other navigate the world and become the best versions of ourselves that we can. It’s about the links in the chain and how, if you fail to help someone when you can, you are hurting someone.

We cannot actually help each other when we see ourselves as individuals who must protect our own lives at all costs. We can only actually become the best versions of ourselves, I think, when we are also invested in how that affects everyone else as well. We are not separate people completely sealed off from one another in glass pods in a virtual room like in the Matrix (I mean… are we? The simulation has been glitching lots lately). If we are not invested in doing the best things for ourselves and others, and how our own personal growth affects other people on an exponential level, what’s the point?

Maggie Smith said, in a poem called Good Bones, that “life is short and the world is at least half terrible.”

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

Life is short, friends. Why would we not think about what we owe to each other? Why would we not think twice about taking that vacation and potentially carrying an illness to those who can’t fend for themselves? Why wouldn’t we think twice about tipping slightly more? “This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful,” is such a weighted last line to me—Smith is telling us that if the world is at least half beautiful, and could be more beautiful, it’s because of what we make it. That the cards are in our hands, every. single. day.

There have been plenty of people in my life who I think owed me better—not that they owed me in the first place—but just that once you’ve belong to someone, it’s highly suggested that you learn how to treat them kindly, even when you are having a hard time. As Jenny Holzer said, cruelty is always possible later. I take that idea very seriously. The people who have had the opportunity to let me down gently and chose to do it in the most jagged way possibly could have sharpened me into my own arrow, cutting others down. Instead, they have softened me like water over a river rock until I am smooth with thoughtfulness, intention and a swift understanding of how I do and do not want to treat people.

My therapist in college often bought me tampons or shampoo and conditioner while I was experiencing houselessness and poverty. Technically, it wasn’t legal for her to do so. I cried and told her I felt guilty—that it wasn’t her responsibility to buy me these things—that I couldn’t give her anything back. She put her hand to her heart and gave me a look I will never forget. “You belong to me. And I belong to you. We all belong to each other.” The way she said it changed me forever. It was the first time I’d ever heard anyone say something like that to me—I could also tell she completely meant it.

Last weekend, while getting bagels with my friend Reina, she asked me to tell her my life story. There’s a lot of it I hadn’t talked about. So I started from the beginning. When I worked my way up to high school, I began to cry. There were things I’d forgotten about—important things—that people had done for me that made it possible for me to be where and who I am today.

Namely, I had a social worker I went to nearly every day for three years who helped me get through an abusive family situation. I had an AP Psychology teacher-turned-administrator who let me sit in his office and ask for life advice. I had a math teacher named Miss Malouf, who taught me, through her sheer existence, it was not just okay to be gay but it was cool, who taught me it was not just okay to fail tests but it was cool if you still kept trying anyway. I had a college preparedness counselor who knew my situation and crowdfunded a $300 scholarship for the end of my senior year, enough money for me to leave my abusive family, buy a one-way ticket to flee 3,000 miles across the country and go to college in New York to start fresh.

When I think of what we owe each other, and who filled my cup so I could fill others, I think of Madeleine L’Engle, who many years ago long before she died, got a letter from an eight-year-old child asking her questions about her writing and responded with the most sincere letter. It’s the reason I’m still writing. It’s been on my cork board for 17 years.

Now, I’m reminded of how I literally might not be alive today if not for these people, who saw someone suffering, and decided I belonged to them, in the kindest way—that it was their responsibility to help me, people who thought about what we owe to each other.

When I relayed stories from high school and told my friend about these people who had given me so much that, at the time, I didn’t feel I deserved—and didn’t feel they owed me—I cried because I remembered that we never know how we affect people in the small ways, simply in how unintentional or intentional we are with them.

This week, I crowdfunded $350 to get something special for a friend who’s going through a hard time and very unsure of their worth in the world. But I know their worth. And I wanted to find a way to help them feel through it. I knew I didn’t have the money to give this gift to them myself, and I know it isn’t my job to “fix” them. But I did believe it was in my power to do something about the pain I see them going through, and if I had the capacity and ability to help then I should. There are a million small and large ways we can make each other feel cared for. I am always reminded, “You could make this place beautiful.” Who knows what wonders will spring up in the world because of the gift I gave and the way it will affect them?

We are all rocks rippling. I know that’s cheesy. Stay with me here.

Sometimes we are all simply trying to survive. But on the best days, if we can think about what we owe to each other—whether it’s a kind glance, the gesture of taking our headphones off to show someone we are listening, or choosing to do what we can to minimize the spread of a virus to protect the more vulnerable people around us—if we can be disciplined enough to be kind and intentional, we can all give each other so much, through so little. Simply by knowing we are not the only ones panicking or hurting or grieving or questioning. We all are. Your panic and grief is not special. It is, however, your connection to everyone else, and an opportunity to be kind.

If we can recognize the fear of life in ourselves, surely we can find the empathy to recognize it in others. Surely we can understand, then, what we owe to each other. And surely, then, we can build a better, more beautiful world.

The only question is what do you think we owe each other? What kind of world do we want to live in? What can we do today to build it?

Sincerely,
Elly