“He’s your friend… he’s your friend… he’s your friend”.
I repeat the phrase to myself like a mantra. Familiar words that have lost all meaning in the present moment. I’m trying to remember them.
It’s late at night, and I’m a few beers in, staring at my phone and the latest graphic my friend has uploaded to his social feed. Something about the ridiculousness of our latest restrictions, or how the virus has a stunningly low mortality rate. About how this is all blown out of proportion.
It’s the third post from him that evening to similar effect. He’s obviously on a tear. And I, like a moth to a flame, like a dog to vomit, keep returning. My hand hovers on the reply button. I’m just uninhibited enough to start a fight. Or rise to one.
My wife takes away my phone.
“You’re drunk. And he’s our friend”.
She’s right of course, on both counts.
The next day I return with clearer eyes, and my mood isn’t much better. In my absence, others (whose partners did not physically remove their phones) had responded to my friends’ assertions. A back and forth had developed, these stats versus those, this infringement of rights versus that benefit, all of it loaded, all of it tense.
It’s tense for me too. It’s personal. I’ve been witnessing increasing numbers of confirmed cases return to the hospital with shortness of breath. And I had just received an email from my child’s school informing me that a student there is infected. That was our first email, but for many of my friends, this has been occurring regularly. It’s become personal for all of us. The once distant threat is more real than ever. Here now, and revealing itself daily.
So too our anxiety and fear is showing itself daily. Each conversation stubbornly fixated upon this virus, the new governmental restrictions, or the uncertain near future. My online social feeds are shouting. Most of the shouting reinforces my echo chamber. Memes that show what an intubation procedure looks like, in case someone finds a cloth mask uncomfortable. Stories of those who have unexpectedly lost loved ones during this pandemic, and could not be at their beside. Doctors and nurses, pleading with their friends, families and communities to follow the precautions outlined or mandated for their safety.
But occasionally, a break in the echo chamber comes through. And in a world of shouted agreement, these posts are especially abrasive. Posts that imply that all my worry, caution, and potential danger to myself and my family is overblown.
I respond to my friend’s post. As rationally and empathetically as I am able in that moment. A back and forth of our own develops, but after multiple exchanges, we are no closer to agreement. Even with my best arguments, he’s not miraculously converted to my line of thinking.
(Makes you wonder the point of all this shouting and shaming, when we intuitively know it will not change minds and hearts).
I text my friend, “we should go for a walk”. My friend agrees. A little fresh air and sunlight could do us both a world of good.
I’m nervous before going on the walk, but we don’t immediately discuss our views on the virus or his recent posts. That’s not how real life works. It’s been a few months since we’ve seen each other face to face. We talk about our partners and children. We talk about our jobs. We talk about how we miss seeing groups of people. We talk about how it is heartbreaking to find a community to belong to, and suddenly be unable to meet face to face. We talked about how the use of sanitizer in schools causes both of our children to develop sores and inflammation on their hands. We talk about what fear does to a culture, how hard it is to connect with another when you are suspicious that they (or yourself), might have a deadly virus in tow. We talk about how keeping people at a physical distance creates a mental distance as well. We talk about how “hope deferred makes the heart sick”.
We find a great deal that we connect on. Eventually, we discuss his posts, our viewpoints on the virus and our responses to it. In talking with him, I am able to realize how raw and exposed I feel, how personally I took those posts. There is a lot that I disagree with. We come from incompatible starting points, and therefore expect wildly different outcomes. We both place reliance on data that we can not, individually, prove and authenticate. We differ greatly on who we trust and whose data we can rely upon.
We do not come to complete agreement. But the walk was never about that. The walk, I realize, has far less to do with convincing my friend that he is wrong than it does convincing myself that we are still good friends.
And we are still good friends. Because for a bright, sunlit December morning traipsing around the back hills of Mission Creek, I saw my whole friend.
Now, this is obvious, and you probably don’t need me reminding you, but what we see online of each other is not a full person. These are snapshots, curated by creator and platform alike, and removed from the context of real life.
Lots of people more intelligent and articulate than myself have explored this phenomenon. Long before we ever heard of Coronavirus or Covid-19, those who study human behavior have been raising the alarm that social media often creates unrealistic, false, and socially destructive images of each other. That it leaves us feeling more isolated and disconnected, not less.
And in our isolation right now, it can feel like all we have.
Compounding this, we are all desperately focused on a singular, complex and unfolding event. Our newsfeeds and socials are saturated with posts about a virus with unprecedented spread and death toll in our lifetime. We are reading about and discussing new vaccine technologies which the world has never seen. We are debating the credibility of data we have never before considered. We are posting our opinions on how we are collectively incurring deficits in the billions.
Some of us are acting as if we are covertly trained economists, politicians, epidemiologists, virologists, pharmacologists, or health officers. But even those of us who begrudgingly admit our ignorance in these matters are still ready and willing to shout our opinions on social media.
On my long walk with my friend it occurred to me that what we are currently discussing is no less than “life, liberty and the security of person”. The stakes are that high, for me, and for my friend, despite our very different take on this present moment. It is natural that we would all want a say in these matters, even when they are well out of our depth. This can be infuriating when we read opinions and conclusions that are contrary to our own, or discount our own first hand experience. But it is not unexpected.
So many of the critiques of policy I have come across highlight a perceived failure of balance. A focus on a particular part, at the expense of the whole: Small businessnesses that are shuttered while big box stores continue to operate, resulting in a future economy further monopolized by the biggest players; Restrictions and reductions on elective surgeries allow redeployment of resources, but come at the cost of personal pain and complications from the delay; A government offers emergency funds, but saddles billions of dollars of debt with our children and grandchildren (and so on).
“It’s difficult to convey the whole of a thing online. We don’t tend to I haven’t seen a whole lot of memes that convey the difficulty of balancing both life and liberty. The whole is less about shouting, more about dialogue. I can agree with these restrictions, and still be aware of the overall cost of them. In fact, I should. We should all be able to live with some complexity and nuance. The whole of a thing is always messy, complicated, and full of contradictions and compromises.
But so are we. And in a moment where we are only seeing a part of each other, it’s easy to mistake it for the whole. We are not our most recent Facebook post or Instagram story. Those that we have invited into our lives, we have invited for a reason. Their whole person is important to us, as we are to them.
Remembering a person’s wholeness does not mean that truth matters less, or that boundaries are not important. It is simply the refusal to reduce someone to their sharpest edges. It is the generous humility of remembering our common struggles. It is being gracious with another as to allow disagreement and complexity.
And humility, generosity and grace are exactly what we need right now.
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