A Personal Reflection During COVID-19
Like you, I find myself intensely wrestling with the effects of this pandemic. On so many levels, in so many ways, our lives are fundamentally changing before our very eyes, and it is nearly impossible to predict what will happen in the days and weeks ahead. But here are some things I have been thinking about.
We must take the time to check-in with each other, even amid our urgent need to keep things moving ahead. So many of us are scared, frightened, at a loss for what to do. We feel increasingly isolated, alone. Maintaining human connection is so important to our sense of hope and our mental health. We must not forget this. Not now.
Indeed, so many among us are profoundly vulnerable during this time. Some of us are now unemployed, furloughed—without work and pay. Others are increasingly invisible to one another and to our larger society—suffering while we search for the drug treatments we need, the food we need, the shelter we need.
It’s Passover for me: I am taught that there must be no strangers among us. We must bring everyone along with us on this journey. If community is not a common enterprise now, then when is it? Now, it must be.
I also know that during disasters, many communities and societies come together, with people exhibiting incredible innate capacities for individual and collective actions. This is happening right now. And yet when disasters recede, we often revert back to our old ways of doing things.
Given the conditions of our politics and public life before this pandemic, I see an enormous opportunity to use this crisis to disrupt the path of division and despair we were on, and pivot to a more hopeful, inclusive tomorrow. But this will take us being focused, intentional, and relentless when the time comes. We will have to summon the courage and humility to change how we see who has something to contribute, and the ways in which we work together.
During this time I am working harder than ever, but I have also been stopped in my tracks, reviewing over and over again what my focus should be moving ahead. In Harwood Institute terms, I find myself being “ruthlessly strategic” in zeroing in more and more on what I believe the Institute’s most meaningful contribution can be in the next days, months, and years. These are not new thoughts, but they are clearer than ever. Yes, this is no doubt a time for survival, but let us also make it a period of genuine, deep, and honest reflection, even renewal.
When all is said and done, the Institute, and my life’s work, is about HOPE. How we engender an authentic sense of hope that all people have a real shot at the American Dream. That all people can fulfill their God-given potential. And that all people believe that tomorrow can be better than today. I will not stop working on HOPE. Never.
My hope for you is that you and your family and your loved ones are in good health and good spirits. And that as we move through this crisis, each of us will turn outward toward one another, extend an open hand, and help lift each other up.