New Mexico has opened once more and we’re all encouraged to get back out there and live life again.
One of the get-back-to-living things I did recently was go swing dancing — something I love and have done regularly (save during this pandemic) for more than 25 years.
I was surprised at how good a time I had. It felt almost illicit to be so close and so merry after so long in isolation. But I was also surprised at how packed the dance hall was and how, even while having a good time, I could be so creeped out.
Yet there we were: grateful, yes, but by the end of the night did we also take it a little for granted?
In truth, I have always loved a good storm. I love how inconvenience forces us to set aside our plans to attend to a more immediate present.
Power might go out, or roads might be impassable, or maybe we’re unexpectedly stranded. We are given pause, and in the space of this pause, I think we often become better people. We will offer a stranger kindness, be it shelter, a meal or a ride home.
We are more attentive to our neighbors, less hasty in condemnation and more generous with our resources.
My view is not the norm. Humanity is mostly portrayed at its worst during calamity, with violence, looting and all kinds of nastiness. The larger the calamity, the worse the portrayal. But in my experience, significant interruptions in our daily grind tend to make us better.
We are, in fact, more inhumane when entrenched in our daily grind. We are callous, we speak meanly, we steal parking and throw elbows in the line at the grocery store. We become so wrapped up in our own ambitions that we rarely see, let alone care about anyone not directly benefiting us, and even then, all bets are off.
We also forget, or ignore, the greater suffering of the world around us.
It should come as no surprise that my motorcycle tour business continues going nowhere fast.
My tours run in India, after all, birthplace to the infamous delta variant, the one causing so much trouble right now. I haven’t had client tours for almost two years, and while certainly that affects me, I got to swing dance on a recent night.
My Indian friends are not so lucky. They are truly hanging on by the skin of their teeth. And that’s just India. There’s also the rest of the world.
So yes, I am apprehensive about reopening. I’m no fool — I know we need economic exchange to pay rent and buy food and get on with living. I worry, though, that when we sink back into our old lives we will forget the better people we are and largely have been, for a time.
I worry we will shelve our better selves for the next storm. And what a shame that would be when they are needed now more than ever.
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July 13, 2021 at 10:55AM
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Back to normal? Will we lose the better people we have become? - Santa Fe New Mexican
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