Lessons of the Pandemic

Value and Meaning

“The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.”

Carl Jung

          We are hearing a lot during the pandemic shut-in about how people have come to realize what is most important to them—their connection with family and friends. When you have been isolated for as long as we have been (almost 5 months now), you begin to realize how touch deprived we are, how much we want to hug and kiss the people we love. In other words, there is a rising awareness of what has meaning in our lives—and what does not.

          We know that while making a living is important, how we make that living is equally important. We know that schooling is important for our children, but how they are schooled is equally important. We know now how inequality affects us all and not just those caught up in the web of poverty and injustice. We know that we were missing the most important parts of human life in the pursuit of wealth. We are not spending money at the same rate because we understand that need rather than want should drive purchases. And we have come to realize just how important a compassionate and competent government is to all of us. Hopefully, we are beginning to understand that the joy of giving is just as gratifying as the joy of receiving. Now, we know how important the people who work at jobs that pay the least are to the comfort and well-being of all of us.

          All the ideas that we have given lip service to are sinking in as deep-seeded moral values—human dignity, equality, charity, and humility. We have watched as a man who started out life as a share-cropper’s son in Troy, Alabama, became a mentor to the entire world—not through wealth and greed and entitlement, but through service and commitment and decency and love. We knew all this before the pandemic sidelined us, but we didn’t pay it much attention. Our mothers and daddies and grannies taught us these important lessons, but we took them for granted rather than living them. Now we have a chance to turn that around. To go back to the values that gave us our cherished freedoms and carved a country out of hard work and brotherly love and community. Only this time, that community will include those who have been left outside our doors, and outside the embrace of opportunity and reward.

          If we learn nothing else from this terrible time of sickness and death, let us learn this: if we have no moral ground to stand upon, and no compassion in our hearts, all the money and power in the world will come to nothing. The only thing on this planet that has meaning is love.  Love and genuine connection—those are the lessons of the pandemic.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane