It’s a rainy Saturday morning. Outside my window, a handful of red crested house sparrows, black and white downy woodpeckers and a tufted titmouse wait for a turn at the feeder. They swoop in, eat for a while and then move on, creating space for another to land. There is a line of birds waiting on the adjacent tree. It is as if a call has gone out. “Hey, over here,” they chirp. “There is enough for everyone!”

As an English major, I’ve been known to play with words.  Just ask my psychology students.  It’s not unusual for me to bring up a colloquialism in the middle of lecture on Pavlov. I ask them, “Did you every wonder where that term came from?” Language is important.  It’s the thing that distinguishes us from other mammals. It is the building block of thought. It shapes our experience and creates our ability to connect.  So it’s no surprise that this morning I found myself thinking about the term we’re all using today, a term that many of us paid no attention to just a few weeks ago.

Social distance is defined as “the perceived or desired degree of remoteness between a member of one social group and the members of another, as evidenced in the level of intimacy tolerated between them.”  Social distancing is the act of creating that condition and in a pandemic, like we are in right now, the physical distancing that we are being encouraged to do may keep us healthy. But I can’t help feeling that it is social distancing that got us in this position in the first place.

Stay with me here. In this country alone…

• We have the largest wealth disparity in the world.

• We have the largest number of incarcerated people in the world, mostly brown and black men.

• We have more than half a million people that are homeless every night, many of them are women and children.

• We have a poverty rate of roughly 12%, and that doesn’t even include people who are above the federal poverty levels who can still not afford to pay their bills. 

• We have 44 million people who do not have medical insurance and cannot get adequate health care. 

I could go on, but you get the idea.

How did we get here? If I were standing in front of my students right now, I’d argue that it is because we have weaponized the very thing that we are being encouraged to do right now. 

We live in a deeply divided world. We have lost the capacity to understand one another.  To walk in our neighbor’s shoes.  To feel their pain. As this country has grown we have moved further and further from the concept of we in favor of me. Of mine. The evidence is everywhere.

We’ve all heard over and over again that we have a service economy but now our schools are suspended.  Businesses are shuttering.  March Madness and collegiate spring sports have been cancelled. Theaters have gone dark. Heck, even Disneyland is closed.  This is the most basic of all disasters. It does not matter if you are rich or poor, black or white, sick or healthy. Everyone is going to suffer here. There is no escaping it. 

Perhaps this is a blessing in disguise. As awful as this is, perhaps it’s the only thing that might, and I emphasize the word might, force us to reorder our priorities. Maybe it’s time to remember who the customers are. Maybe, just maybe, someday soon, like the birds outside my window, we too can call out, “Hey, over here. There’s plenty for everyone.”

We have an opportunity here, if we choose to acknowledge it.