Day 11

It’s been eleven days since the World Health Organization designated covid-19 a global pandemic. In that short span, society as we knew it has dramatically changed. We are living within a movie, except this natural disaster is unfolding in realtime and the ending is yet unknown.

Each of us is coming to grips with this new reality on our own timeline. Amid the unprecedented danger and total uncertainty, some reacted by stocking up for months to fortify their families’ wellbeing, while others secured the bare necessities with the intention of leaving enough for others. Some people chose to social distance in the earliest days while others weren’t yet ready to let go of their outside places of comfort. Some are organizing virtual cocktail parties to maintain a sense of normalcy while others are endlessly scrolling social media for signs of life and death.

There is no roadmap for a once-in-a-century event like this. 1918 was the last, and this is a whole other time and place. Even the world’s top scientists and health experts are unable to provide us with the clarity we’re so desperately seeking. So we are left to cobble together fast-evolving facts, discuss within our circles, and stew in our own imaginations. It’s all utterly surreal and each of us is doing our best.

All we can be expected to do is share in this frightening moment as a common humanity. We are all scared, we are all confused, we are all anxiously drifting in the relative calm before the storm. So we must all tap into our reservoirs of empathy, because within empathy we will connect. And through that feeling of connectedness we will find the comfort and strength that we so desperately need right now.

Tomorrow may bring harder news but it will also be one day closer to carrying on with the lives we so deeply miss.

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