Going Back to Normal with More Empathy
We just finished Passover here in Israel, one of the most important and special Jewish holidays, despite the coronavirus.
Going back to normal in the current coronavirus reality, is divided into two parts:
PART I – Getting Used To Our New Reality
Dealing with the basic things such as livelihood/workplace, food, health services, remote schooling, and worrying about what tomorrow will bring. Everyone has their own particular challenges to deal with. This is in addition to the restrictions that the pandemic has placed on our personal freedom. Another issue is the race to ramp up medical innovation for combating the disease. All these new challenges we need to deal with only provide some short term order in our lives. Our coping mechanism is focused on the day to day management of our lives.
PART II – Providing A Good Example
The second part involves building the national resilience of the Jewish people residing in the Land of Israel, and also those scattered throughout the rest of the world. The coronavirus has grouped us together in a negative manner, because it’s only the fear of death that has stopped us from trampling each other like we normally do.
At the same time we’re getting an opportunity to learn many new things about ourselves: the way we exist, our relationships, family, work and beyond. There is a different and broader perspective than the period preceding the outbreak.
We didn’t plan for this to happen, and this situation was forced on us against our will. But since it’s already happened, let’s see what good we can take from this for later on, when there is no external threat forcing us.
We have many great examples of the benefits of this new state. So when the time comes to ‘return to normal’ – whatever that will be – we’ll need to figure out how we’ll behave.
Will we be brave enough and willing to continue to strengthen one another, and practice empathy toward others? To begin a new culture of behaving outwardly, the way I behave in my own home? I’m not imagining that these things will happen overnight, but I hope we can at least agree on the general direction, and that it’s really the cure to everything.