You'll never walk alone
We have hope, but we also have fears.
Just know that this is not something to be ashamed of.
Grieve and rail as you must, because the times demand it.
But you'll never walk alone.
We are larger than they are. We contain multitudes.
All they have is hate and fear. We have love and hope.
They don't know the meaning of love. They don't know the meaning of hope, or faith, or empathy. They're lost in their own pathology, and don't realize that they harm themselves more than they harm those whom they hate.
Whenever I see a rotund white man walking around with an assault rifle, I don't feel fear. I feel nothing but pity, and a bit of disgust. He has splintered himself from any decent human community, and feels as if he has to put on all these accoutrements in order to feel like a human being worthy of love and respect. Whereas the opposite is true: to be worthy of that love and respect, he merely has to reach out a hand in understanding and fellowship. The open hand is much more well-received than the clenched fist. A skinny black guy said that, I think.
We are in the greatest crisis that the world has faced since the end of the War in the Pacific. We are in a crisis partly of our own making, as over the decades we've forgotten that a unified humanity is much more powerful than a disjointed one. People allied with each other to defeat fascism in the middle of the 20th Century; however, we didn't learn the lesson that unity contributes more to a human life than national pride. There is no reason why a mother in Zimbabwe can't have as rich and secure a life as a middle class office worker from Tokyo. It's a choice which we make, blinkered by prejudice and territoriality.
This is the first great global crisis of our hyper-mediated age. And it isn't a crisis of war and conflict, but of that eternal human enemy: viral infection. A virus doesn't care if you're American or Russian, French or Vietnamese. A virus has very basic needs. And if we respond with a strategy of meeting just our basic, national needs, we'll fall to the virus. Donald Trump's bloviation that "AMERICA WILL COME ROARING BACK" is as nothing to a world wracked by pandemic. States can decide to "open" the economy, but that means nothing if people don't feel safe. This crisis isn't one which respects national borders, or responds to bluff and bluster. This crisis is one which drives home that we are all one human family, and what began in Wuhan most certainly affected Peoria.
You'll never walk alone. It's a simple sentence which doesn't just apply to a soccer team. None of us, unless we choose to, walks alone. We have bonds of family and friends and community. We are members of things bigger than ourselves. As John Donne wrote, no man is an island. To think that we are just atomized elements among other atomized elements is a betrayal of what it means to be human. The reason so many yearn for a return to the Before Time is because human beings aren't meant to live in isolation. We need that common intercourse which gives our lives meaning. But we can't return to that Before Time—if we'll ever be able to—without treating the here and now with the seriousness and urgency it deserves. I won't be able to do what I love—facilitating book clubs, showing movies in the library, interacting with my wacky patrons—unless we band together and defeat this virus. Those who cavil and complain about wearing a mask show themselves to be nothing more than antisocial pariahs, and contributors, ironically, to us not getting past the plague. They think they're striking a blow for liberty, but are instead ensuring that this disease continues unabated. Rather than friends of freedom, their selfishness denies the rest of us a shot at being unshackled from this illness.
As long as I can, I'll make sure to keep this blog alive. Because none of us will walk alone.