Responsibility

I want to talk about responsibility. When we can't see each other it feels like the burdens of the world aren't as evenly distributed. We feel like Atlas, with the weight of the world on our shoulders, responsible for supporting our families, our livelihoods and, if there's time, ourselves. Pandemic literally means "all people," and this one has lived up to its name. Every one of us is affected by this. It has cost me, so far, a trip to Denver to see family, a two-year-old's birthday party and a production of My Fair Lady I was very much looking forward to. I've been very lucky. As this goes on, my list of casualties will grow but it will hopefully continue to only include items that are replaceable or not that important. To ensure my chances at that, I feel responsible to stay inside to avoid catching or spreading the disease, I feel responsible for supporting businesses that rely on audiences and crowds as best as I can, I feel responsible for making myself invaluable at work even in difficult circumstances and I feel responsible to learn as much as I can about what's going on. 

It's that last one that makes me feel best and makes the other three feel more attainable. I know it seems counterintuitive to recommend paying closer attention to the news right now when there are documentaries about private zoo wars, countless Instagram bingo cards and reality dating shows where the contestants either aren't allowed to see each other or are actually blind, I haven't gotten a straight answer about that. Watch and do those things, please, distractions are worthwhile but they are distractions. I can only tell you that the best medicine I have found during this whole thing is information. Thomas Hobbes wrote "Hell is truth seen too late" nearly 400 years ago. In America, that will be the title of the first chapter of this pandemic. I'm not more plugged into what's going on these days because the news is good (it's not) but because learning about how we and the rest of the world struggles against it puts my struggle into context. It helps me not take my situation for granted as someone who can work from home and, for the time being at least, support businesses that need it. It also reminds me that our country, whose response has been somewhere between lethargic and negligent, is in enviable shape. India and Pakistan, which is attempting to keep a fifth of humanity in their homes, is facing a much bigger climb. 

All this is to say that the weight of the world is not on your shoulders. For that matter, it's not even on Atlas' shoulders. Zeus ordered Atlas to hold up the sky, not the earth. These days it feels like Pandora's box has been opened (and as we are on the subject of clarifying Greek myths, the container Pandora opened was a jar, not a box) and that an overwhelming amount of bad things have been unleashed upon the world. In times like these, if we don't get crushed by our sense of responsibility, we shift it to other people. COVID-19 suddenly becomes "the Chinese virus," China says our military produced the bug, Iran is refusing aid from everywhere including the United States of which it says "Possibly your medicine is a way to spread the virus more." Some leaders, in contrast to the nature of leadership, say they take no responsibility of all. Blaming during calamities is nothing new, as Pandora herself well knows. Given the jar by the gods as a wedding gift, Pandora, which means "all gifted," (there's that "pan-" prefix again), was asked to never open it and can't really be blamed for her curiosity, though she is. Our legends frequently find female scapegoats for understandable actions (take a bow, Eve) and downplay the positive side effects those actions produced. I understand the desire not to look in the jar. The Greeks say it included plagues like ruin, discord, lies, battles, hardship and more. So it does. But the Greeks were clear that it was also the only source for a different attribute; hope.