The World on Dim

The pandemic seized the epidemic.

With its social distancing and hand-washing the pandemic is putting a helpful dent in our epidemic of loneliness.

We're seeing people we never saw before…but from a socially acceptable distance.

Usually I read the newspaper while eating lunch but last week I couldn't touch the paper as I'm in the throes of germ-a-phobia.  My eyes are trained on the two television sets hanging above the lunch counter.  I try, but fail, to find interest in the ESPN re-run of a women's college softball game.  And so people nod at each other, talk about the predicament, wish each other well.

A men’s bathroom is a place where we deliberately don’t notice things.  More explicitly we don’t stand too close, we don't make eye contact and we certainly don't look down.  But now standing at the row of sinks it’s like we all know the same secret. We are all experts on hand-washing, watching the others scrub, nodding in acknowledgement how long we’ve been there, our lips moving to the ABCs.

We've launched the grand experiment of everyone working from home.  Employees in different offices who’ve never spoken are reaching out about how they are handling school closures and spouses working in the next room.

Discussions with friends are easier, we all have a reason to call.  No need to ask:  “Anything new?”

Lives are upended, our empty nest is “wait what? You’re coming home?”

There’s an article entitled:  This is not a snow day.  But it feels like one.  The days when you wake up and the ground is covered, everything is cancelled and the earth is silent.  I walk outside, the roads are nearly empty, the Starbucks, the salad place, the office, everything is softer.

We are distancing ourselves at a time when the scale of loneliness has never been higher and the physical distancing is actually bringing us closer in our shared (fill in the blank) fear, interest, worry, challenge, fight.

Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat, etc are no longer filled with FOMO moments, now it’s all sad faces about the things that were cancelled.  And that makes us happier.

Tom Friedman used to talk about what it would be like to act like China for a Day.  We could make decisions and do things, close down cities, move mountains, shut off factories and clean things up.  And in some ways now we can.  It’s mostly voluntary, no totalitarian regime, yet.  But it’s just a matter of time.

But while the world hasn’t been shut off, it does feel like someone adjusted the dimmer switch.

Everything has been turned down a notch.  It's an opportunity to make those calls, read those books, write that letter, learn that game, do that project around the house.  An excuse not to do all the things on your outside to-do list, but the inside one.

And beauty of the opportunity is that there is no Pro-Covid 19 party.  Which makes this battle unique.  This is not like climate change where some say yes and some say no and some say, OK maybe, but there is nothing we can do about it.  Everyone is doing it, maybe at a different pace, but everyone is girding against a common enemy

Our economic rival China, well they have it in spades.  But also Iran, our military rival.  Everyone is focused on fixing the thing down the hall and less focused on the noise coming from their neighbor.

Other world benefits:

• In Israel they have been unable to solve a political crisis with three elections.  Now the virus is creating a “political thaw” and a chance for a coalition government.
• Nancy Pelosi and the White House played nice to get a bill that is widely praised.
• The political season, which everyone agrees is too long, is suddenly shortened by cancelled primaries.
• Neighbors who we haven’t seen in years are suddenly walking the streets. My wife came back from a walk with lots of neighborhood news after bumping into someone.  “We were in no rush.  No one has anyplace to go."

A recent New York Times piece on an Alaskan earthquake from the 1960s explains why we do so well in times of crisis.

In ordinary times we suffer alone, causing us to feel vulnerable and resentful of others, the sociologists in the article said.  We feel discriminated against since others have been spared.

But the pandemic peels that away.