What's Love Got to Do with This?

Yesterday at Whole Foods, I picked up a bright yellow lemon and felt like I was taking my life into my gloved hand.

But I have a lot of those moments now. I’m about to do something so ordinary like kiss my husband when he comes in from work, or grab the railing up the steep steps to the forest trail. Then I don’t. The kiss becomes this awkward attempt at connection, because who knows what particles Mark picked up that day, alone in his office. (He still breathed the air in the hallway, right?) And as much as I want to pull myself up those stairs, my hand stops in mid-air and retreats.

World, we are scared. We are freaked out by this Coronavirus that is threatening to come for our asthmatic lungs, our dads in nursing homes, our elderly neighbors, and even our 21-year-old sons (thank you, Phinny), who bravely make the CVS run for our inhaler prescriptions without knowing what aerosol particles are lurking around some asymptomatic, but infected, customer.

Every New York Times news dive is another opportunity to contract more tightly into ourselves. We have countless chances each day to stop, pause, and panic.

But here’s the thing. Right now, I’m not on the front lines. I’m not crawling into a blue hazmat suit and dragging my tired, possibly sick, body into Mass General  Hospital to care for people who can’t draw a breath. I’m not a cashier at Stop ‘n’ Shop ringing up that guy with the cough who’s buying a bottle of Advil and the last thermometer on the nearly naked shelves.

I’m here in my comfortable home, writing and teaching online in my living room that smells like disinfectant, with my two college kids upstairs doing their Zoom classes. I have thirty days’ worth of food if we don’t mind eating pasta twice a week—and who does? And every afternoon I head out to the Fellsway or Walden Pond to walk a few miles. I am fine, and I am determined not to waste this time of burgeoning awareness.

Two years ago, I heard Oprah speak at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell where I teach. This is one of the most poignant things she told the Tsongas Center crowd: “Every morning, I wake up and ask how can I serve?”

That’s my answer to this virus. Asking, how can I serve?

The most obvious way to serve is to try not to catch or spread this dreadful thing. By now, we know how to wash our hands, elbow a door open, and have a conversation from a six-foot distance (my friend Holloway suggested we wear hoop skirts when walking in crowded places). We also need to connect with and care for people, make sure our loved ones and neighbors are okay without risking our lives, or theirs. And that, too, is serving.

But I think there is another, less obvious, way to serve. In fact, it can be as hard to notice as this stealth virus lurking on that plastic surface for up to something like ten days. I’m talking about going inside—going into our souls and our hearts—and acknowledging that there is a powerful transformation happening in the world right now.

I can’t tell you what it means because it’s a mystery, and maybe mystical, too, strange and inexplicable. But it’s touching every single person on this planet. When did that last happen? When did nearly every person on earth have some version of the same worry, fear, hope, and longing? Could this shared experience be uniting us in our humanity? Through the fear of death, could we be learning a new way to live?

To be clear, I am in no way being cavalier about this crisis. I am very conscious that people are suffering and dying, often alone. Folks are out of jobs and money, and the unemployment rate is staggering. What I am saying is that at the core of this tragedy, we seem to be awakening to some strange cosmic revolution. I don’t want to spend this moment just binge-watching Netflix and drinking quarantinis, though there will be some of that, too.

Rather, I feel like this is the time to pay attention. Not the fake kind of attention I’ve been paying with one eye on my screen, but real, focused attention to what Nature is saying. She seems a little pissed off, and rightly so. We’ve been so busy being polarized and hateful, talking trash about this group and that side, all while sipping an iced coffee through a plastic straw then tossing it into what is eventually the ocean.

I have never felt more humbled, more vulnerable, more frightened, and, in some ways, more alive than right now. And I want to see what’s on the other side of this. I want to know when we can safely come out of hiding, will we have the courage to change our ways? Will we have the strength? The desire? By getting a glimpse of the swift, unyielding hand of destruction, will we finally raise our voices and fight for our planet’s salvation—and for each other?

I really hope so.

I also hope that now while we’re all in survival mode, that we can notice and acknowledge that we love being alive in this world. It’s hard, yes. Life is so hard sometimes, but also so precious. Can we, then, together draw a breath and acknowledge that in our shared humanity, we are connected through love? My heart hurts so much with love right now that sometimes I think I can’t breathe.

So, today, how can I serve?

I can be kind. I can take care of myself and my people. I can turn that lemon into a pie. I can call my neighbor, bring a book sprayed with Lysol to my friend and leave it on his doorstep, and I can notice that—whether we like it or not—something transformative is happening. And in addition to washing our hands and changing our ways, we are being called to open our hearts and love our way through it. In fact, I’m not sure that we have another choice.