To survive, we must kill our egos

To survive, we must kill our egos
                        

I stepped outside myself today and put on an invisible cloak. I haunted posts and threads and overheard people chattering heatedly in the aisles of my local convenience stores. I took to the air and looked down on the hamlet I call home, weaving in and out of the back alleys and main thoroughfare and the halls of the schools I attended since kindergarten. I sensed denial and outrage, acceptance and assertiveness, anger and disbelief, positivity and forward-thinking.

I picture myself as a bystander, watching Missy having conversations with others on current topics that had they been dry tinder would have exploded in flames. I see her struggle to form the words she so desperately believes in, wanting to convey them so she doesn’t sound crass, uninformed. I see the people she is talking to respond carefully, some with anger, some with kindness and regard, and some with a need to step over uncomfortable truth.

It’s agonizing to step outside a situation and view it candidly, a clash of belief systems based on a political divide — egos too lined with the words of politicians masquerading as something they’re not. But she must, and they must. To survive, we must kill our egos.

We were not ready for this pandemic to reach us because we were told for weeks it was under control, and we satisfied our egos with the knowledge this country is always at the ready.

We watched from afar as people died, imploring us to take heed and prepare. When things became chaotic here, we denied this could and would happen, even as we bought out complete aisles of toilet paper at our local stores. “I choose not to believe this” was a phrase I saw typed over and over inside the linings of social-media posts, as we hung firmly on to American exceptionalism.

I remember when Tamir Rice was shot on a playground in Cleveland at 12 years old. The police pulled up and shot him within a second, and there weren’t many places online I could go that I didn’t hear people exclaiming, “He should have just complied, and he wouldn’t have been shot.” It didn’t matter that he didn’t have a real gun.

Now as restaurants and movie theaters and elections are shut down or postponed for the collective good, a groan has gone up from the “you must comply” crowd. Our Gov. DeWine has taken remarkable steps to lead us in these unsettling days, and what I’ve consistently heard and read are people saying they don’t want to comply with his directives because they don’t make sense.

As I gathered up some last-minute items at a dollar store nearby, the cashier told me angrily that the entire pandemic was a made-up hoax to make our president look bad. I placed my wipes and noodle soups on the counter and looked at him carefully. I stepped outside myself and surveyed the line I was in, the woman in front of me agreeing with him and the response I was struggling with in the back of my throat. I saw myself shift uncomfortably, knowing anything I said would probably be rejected. I saw myself ask him if distancing from others for a time was a hard price to pay for slowing the spread of the virus, but he was lost to me. He did not believe the virus was real.

The last few days I have seen the helpers. People are organizing to make sure children are fed because they are off school, pages have been created to make sure people know what small businesses are delivering food as they have had to shut their dining areas down to the public, and people are sharing the gift of song and poetry and readings online so people still have access to beautiful, wonderful things while we remain mostly at home. I am heartened by this, and I love my community.

And while I hold onto my faith for dear life, I will never believe that just because of it I am immune to disaster or disease. We cannot be so blind as to have a faith that isn’t proactive, a faith that solely rests in a blindness to science and reality and preparedness.

We should never depend on what any one political proclivity tells us to believe because that leads us to a place where we simply don’t accept any bad thing will happen to us.


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