Since I started this blog and have posted a grand total of twice in four months, I have begun a dozen posts, sitting in draft form here in the matrix (please don’t contact me about Matrix movie references…I cannot muse about the metaphorical significance of Neo nor can I bend backward to avoid slow-motion bullets). I have lots of ideas, you see, which take time to take shape. This post I started 8 days ago. And in that 8 days, the world has been shaken by the shoulders. Seismologically, there is no way to reverse this course, as Superman did in 1978, saving Lois Lane from the asphyxiating gravel that swallowed her and her tomato red Ford Custom. Today’s shifting sand has not yet sunk us, but it could if we don’t get over ourselves and take action. (For the benefit of historians, decades from now pouring over my revered blog posts for clues about life in 2020, I’m referring to the spread of the coronavirus, COVID-19 to be precise, resulting in officials shuttering schools, restaurants, malls, libraries, and any public space that might draw in people who breathe on each other, for an as-yet undetermined amount of time into the future.)
We St. Paul families with school-aged children are one week ahead of the rest of Minnesota with our “stay home” practice. Nearly two weeks ago, the biggest thing on our minds in this family was whether my husband, a kindergarten teacher, was going to be on strike the following Tuesday, and by default, whether our kids would be in class. The SPFE (St. Paul Federation of Educators) strike in early March 2020 was an opportunity to advocate for the value of our education system, the professionals who comprise it’s structure, and the students the system is designed to serve. This action was for St. Paul specifically, but in essence it cast a spotlight on the challenges schools across our nation are enduring: the harsh repercussions of crafting a society bent on the ideals of constant growth in pursuit of wealth and power.
Four days of strike strangely prepared us for the next round of normal-life disruption, exponentially larger in scope: the coronavirus surfacing here in Minnesota, also an opportunity to consider the repercussions of crafting a society bent on the ideals of constant growth in pursuit of wealth and power.
By design and by fate, we have met with forces that betray our sustainabilty.
The teachers on the picket line were/are not petulant, demanding huge bonuses and three-day work weeks. If that were the case, they would have been alone…but instead they were joined by a sea of chanting citizens wearing red in solidarity, children offering bagels and teenagers doing aerial cartwheels and parents shoving cups of hot coffee into their hands. Basic respect was their agenda, their plea a re-allotment of existing resources so the district could support the conditions within which children can do what we expect them to do and what our society depends upon for survival, which is to learn how to operate in the world as community citizens, also in the community as world citizens. It takes a cosmos of qualified individuals to make this happen, to pass the torch of knowledge and ignite imaginations. Unrealistic expectations on staff and too much chaos result in reasonable conditions not being met. Those who suffer most are the “product” (what a gross word for children) of the system, and consequently our society as a whole.
I don’t want to nominate teachers for sainthood. I’m not interested in pitting the value of those who choose to educate children against those who feel called to other vocations, to sell insurance or clean office buildings or advocate for the homeless or write code or preach or nurse or sing for their supper. Yet I can’t help but ceaselessly philosophize about the scales we use to assign value to absolutely everything — professions, objects, experiences, nature, people.
The coronavirus craze has vaulted these scales into another dimension, one where we don’t even have to ask ourselves how much to tip the server because we don’t have one. How now do we measure physicians against professional athletes, lawyers against chemical engineers? Those in hazmat suits cleaning up hospital rooms against the journalists? The elderly and vulnerable against the young and healthy? And why, oh my stars why, is possessing a bazillion rolls of toilet paper and hundreds of N95 face masks even a thing, to the detriment of our efforts to combat this virus?
Why have we made this a competition in the first place?
What if, instead of lopsidedly fixating on the perceived value of each vocation and every slice of humanity, we shifted toward curiosity about how we each fit into the picture? We are here, and we have purpose…so how do we use our imagination to live into that, and help others live into their purpose? What if we allowed ourselves to not solve every person, and just accepted their presence, did our part to help them live their best life?
Now I realize I’m starting to sound like one of those kooky late-night tv infomercials (if you act now and call this 1-900 number, you’ll receive a free consultation). Yes, I’m an idealist, but I do think it’s time we understand the extreme peripheral view can help us focus on the center, the basic, that which is critical even if it’s ordinary, a given. We can ask: who are our systems designed to serve?
We debate all the time about the role of government in our corporate and individual lives, what the Constitution says, what our human rights are and what our rights as citizens are (oddly not the same thing). What would it look like if we were guided by principles that didn’t rely on the law to implore us to seek the innate value of every person? (This is NOT, I repeat, NOT a manifesto against government involvement in our lives…it has a role, of course, to be explored in another time and place separate from this post.)
We’re now embedded in a lesson about the worldwide network of community being taught to us at breakneck speed in the virus crisis: if people can’t or don’t show up to do what they are called to do, we lose function. If we don’t honor the bonds of interconnectedness, we collapse.
Put another way, when we discount the purpose of anyone, that’s our first mistake — strike one. We are already on our way out. When individuals or cultures or vocations or ecosystems are stripped of their worth by superficial misjudgment and ignorance, or just a lack of imagination or will preventing us from doing the basic right thing, we all lose.
Let’s stay in the game. Let’s figure this out, even if we trip and fall (daily dose of humility for me), even if we must be shaken until the world spins and we get dizzy. As the horizon settles, we might find ourselves in a whole new place, with steady vision.
