Strange New World
I’m sitting at home, alone in my one bedroom apartment, on a rainy Saturday afternoon in Sydney, Australia.
The world feels quieter. Almost frozen… as if we have entered into a state of suspended animation. Waiting…watching… and then waiting some more.
I took a short walk early this morning… a taste of sunshine and fresh air, keeps me sane and prepares me to spend the rest of the day in self-isolation.
I’m not sick, but as per all of the recommendations and research, I am now self-isolating to help minimize the spread of the virus. I leave the house for my morning walk and to go food-shopping when need be.
That’s pretty much it.
When I look around, the world appears the same, but everything feels different. Eerie. Unfamiliar. Disorienting. I feel like I’ve stepped into a sci-novel or a parallel universe…The new reality looks uncomfortably close to so many of the dystopian novels I read in high-school.
Sign outside the Hotel Ravesis in Bondi
Bondi beach has officially been closed and ramshackle fences and striped red tape block off its entrances. Bondi’s usually bustling streets of bars, cafes, and restaurants are mostly closed, with signs on their doors wishing people well and saying they will be back as soon as they can.
There is a palpable and inescapable sadness in the air these days…lost jobs, lost loved ones, an unknown future, and a bubbling global existential dread that most have never felt so profoundly.
There are moments these days when I read the news, that I can hardly keep my food down. The chaos that is unfolding in virus hot spots all over the world seems incomprehensible. The world feels like it’s been transformed overnight into a war-zone, and we’re fighting an enemy that’s invisible, merciless and entirely lacking any moral compass. It’s a war we don’t have a timeline for.
The pandemic hits home, and sends me to my knees, when I speak to some of my family members and friends who fear that this virus may end up claiming their lives. It’s so easy to feel helpless and overwhelmed.
When the waves of grief subside…and space clears inside me, I can begin perceive what feels almost like the shifting of tectonic plates beneath my feet. The world is re-arranging itself. It feels as if this virus is attempting to press reset on a trajectory of destruction that humanity had been on for so long, it’s begging us to wake up.
Mayfarm flowers at the mostly empty Bondi Market offering up free roses for anyone who has lost their job or is feeling overwhelmed.
I recognize there is something profound unfolding…and I’m determined not to miss this moment.
Whenever I come across someone these days, it doesn’t really matter who, I ask them how they’re doing. My favorite coffeeshop baristas down at Bondi Massive, or Steve, the owner of the restaurant down the street, my neighbors, and sometimes strangers, whose eyes I meet and they say, please ask me how I am.
The answer is for the most part, the same. It goes something like this; I’m doing OK. Kind of. It’s not easy right now. We’re not sure what’s going to happen. We may have to close our shop. We may not be able to pay rent. I’ve lost my job. My brother has lost his job. The company is going under. My parents are in hospital. I’m feeling overwhelmed. I’m concerned about the people who don’t have support. I am afraid of getting sick. I’m worried about my neighbor who is pregnant and is out of work. But there are people worse off than me, and I’m trying to keep positive. I am worried about everyone else. The truth is, we’re all in it together.
These sentiments reveal a thread which has been woven through the hearts and lives of each of us, drawing us closer together.
But the thing is, we’ve always been in it together.
We have always lived in an interdependent world. Our actions have always affected the lives of people elsewhere… The work we do, how we treat the environment, what we buy, the message we put out into the world, the businesses we support, how we vote, the places we fly to for vacation; all of these choices do not happen in a vacuum.
However, most of us have lived our lives in a bubble, not necessarily recognizing how our choices are affecting the lives of an enormous string of people all over the world. In part because that string has been invisible, and without a conscious effort to track it, remains unknown.
This virus seems to have burst that bubble. It has lit up the web which connects us all in neon lights… not only in terms of how the virus has spread, quickly and globally, but this illusion of separateness has been shattered. It’s become painfully clear how when one part of the web begins to fall apart, it begins to pull the rest down with it. A global empathy has been awoken. Never before has the entire world come to a grinding halt to fight a global crisis. Together.
This pandemic is a moment that will go down in history.
Last week, on the way back from a work trip down to the south coast, I stopped in the small coastal town of Moruya. It sits on the outskirts of Mogo and Bateman’s Bay, an area that was destroyed by the recent bushfires. The buzzing neon “open” sign in the window of Kiah Seafood caught my eye, one of the only places in town that hadn’t locked up shop.
The shop was quiet but open and the owner, Andrew, greeted me with a smile and told me what was on the menu. While I waited for my order, I asked him how he was doing and whether the shop would be shutting down soon. He said that in a couple of weeks they probably would have to shut down. He said, he would be OK but he knew a lot of people who wouldn’t.
I sat outside to eat my lunch, but before I left I went back in to say goodbye and wish him well. Andrew was sitting in the middle of his shop, alone, watching the news on a TV that hung over the door, to catch up on the rapidly changing regulations that were being set forth by the government.
The news was yet again about more businesses being asked to shut their doors in New South Wales. But instead of griping about New South Wales Andrew began to tell me how all he and his customers talk about is how terrible they feel for the minimum wage workers in the US who have just lost their jobs and had been living paycheck to paycheck. “I really just feel for them right now. That’s who I’m thinking about.”
Andrew in his fish and chips shop, Kiah Seafood, in Moruya NSW, catching up on the news
This level of empathy struck me as profound…perhaps one of the most positive side-effects of this global pandemic. Andrew is a small business owner, operating in southern New South Wales, in an area surrounded by burn areas that only stopped smoldering just over a month ago, in his empty shop, on the verge of a complete economic shut down – and his concern was not for his own welfare, but that of workers in America.
When I take my walks through town people speak in a subdued voice, with a kindness and gravity that feels unusual, there is a felt sense of being held by the same hands. And I see over and over again, people helping one another in small and big ways to make this time easier on one another.
In communities across the world people are coming together to support each-other. And they’re also thinking about people on the opposite side of the earth to them, being affected by the same crisis they’re being touched by. And in that, they feel connected. They know they’re not alone.
While I am beginning to see the light of this pandemic, filter through the clouds, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t also heartbroken. The whole world is grieving losses on a scale never before experienced. But I do believe that we can come out of this stronger…and perhaps kinder than before. Not only to each-other but also to the earth which is our collective home. That’s what I will be holding out for.
It’s a Strange New World we are living in right now. But, we are all in it together, and we know that now.
