by Barry Berman
The other day I stopped running to change the tunes on my iPhone. I moved off the path on a corner to get out of the way. A young woman came running by and we were both startled. The look on her face was fear, as I’m sure was the look on mine.
Way back, early in March, we had a family dinner where we usually hug each other upon getting together. One of my nephews respectfully and appropriately declined. The next day a friend broke a lunch engagement for the following week.
These two months have staggered us. We had the initial shock of the virus and its devastating potential followed by the continuous drum beat of statistics that shake our foundation, despite the alleged receding of the virus’s peak.
We have adjusted our personal behavior to accommodate the status quo. We began with no masks; now they’re a mandatory part of our wardrobe. We worried about everything we touched; now we’ve adjusted what we wipe and what we leave alone. We know a bit more and we’ve developed routines that make the unknowns less scary.
And now, with more and more places open, we are learning how to adjust once again.
But, there is one unfortunate constant that has plagued us from the very first moment and that is the fear of the other.
We look at others, groups and individuals, family and friends as strangers, as “the other” threatening us with illness and perhaps our lives.
Yes, we smile now when we run or walk past “them.” But, inside we wonder are they carrying the germs that can kill us.
Every time I back away from a friend, a neighbor, my sister in law, my niece, a mail carrier, I cringe and feel terrible.
This fear of the other is its own virus and just as deadly.
We love our neighbors and our families, those who aren’t sequestered with us are others and we fear them.
This fear of the other extends beyond our own immediate circle. The prejudice against people from other countries as well our own American brothers and sisters is palpable (and certainly stoked by our national so-called leadership.) Prejudice is now in the open.
We hear the Chinese are duplicitous. We fear people of color and Latinos as their infection rates exceed the white population. And we ascribe all sorts of nefarious rationale to why that is. We have our guard up against poor people and immigrants. We worship the health care workers, but we’d be frightened to sit next to them.
We are closing our borders and using the corona virus as the excuse for expelling people who we regard as the other.
All this is killing our souls and impacting our mental health. About half of the population feels that their mental health has been harmed, according to a poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Calls to crisis hotlines are up 1000 percent, cites the Washington Post. The truth is we often don’t know how to help our loved ones as we are all feeling our pain differently.
We are human after all and we need humanity. We need to touch and share. But, now, behind every interaction is the nagging and scary notion that the “other” person standing near you could be the angel of death. It’s not a great feeling to know that we are also regarded as the other by everyone else.
In virtually every religion, how one treats “the other” is fundamental. I was thinking about this at Passover, which seems like ages ago, as we recalled the story of the Jews leaving Egypt and we’re told by God, “You must befriend (love) the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
The virus is robbing all of us of a vital aspect of our humanity. To keep our sanity, yes, we need to wear a mask, wash our hands, but never forget that we are human. We need to never lose the longing to touch and be touched. Remember, we too are “the other” and we need each other as importantly as we need a vaccine.
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Barry Berman was founder of CRN International and Connecticut Radio Network. He is an entrepreneur, writer and broadcaster and is starting, Sounds Great! Media a boutique digital audio (podcasting) agency and consultancy with an emphasis on health and wellness.