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By: Rosanne Mondrone, Director of Community Relations
“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of human knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self-kind of understanding.” Plato
This quote jumped right off the page at me. A perfect setting of words and thoughts to embrace in the next phase of the pandemic. All of us are so ready to be done; done with masks, done with isolation and done with any talk about COVID. We have taken one for the team but the game isn’t over yet; and this game requires us to remain steadfast and diligent.
A lot of new information is coming out of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Department of Public Health along with state and local governments. As the new information is released about the variants and the effects it can have on our population of residents and our lives, the merry-go-round of opinion begins.
It is understandable that people start to fear again and want solid answers but sometimes there aren’t any. You know how it feels to be in a relationship that seems to be going really well and all of a sudden “it’s just not what I want”? It’s so frustrating and hurtful. You are blindsided and you need to know why! The why doesn’t always come. In fact, it almost never comes.
This is where we are. We are in a relationship with COVID that seemed to be going okay and now it’s not. Like that broken relationship we experienced, in comes a flood of opinions through friends and family trying to understand the “why”. None of them have any answers. It’s just opinion. It might soothe your heart for a brief moment or it might make you crazy but that’s about all it can do.
We can speculate all we want about what happened and why it happened. We can search out every blog looking for answers about the vaccine or the booster or kids being vaccinated and the should we or should we not? Our answers are not there in public opinion. We find ourselves becoming angry and disillusioned by what we don’t know.
We need an intervention, another 9/12. I have never felt so much empathy towards my neighbors and fellow man as I did after 9/11. We didn’t know any more on that day than we know now. We were afraid, terrified and vulnerable. For whatever reason we r pulled together and gave our best to each other. That empathy saves lives and builds up spirits. It doesn’t demolish another’s understanding. It isn’t disrespectful. It allows us to figure things out without judgement. The world couldn’t believe what a resilient people Americans were after 9/11. They cheered us on as we left our egos at the curb and rebuilt our lives. We cheered each other on with kindness and love.
We need to play nice in the sandbox again and cling to the highest form of human knowledge, living each day in the spirit of empathy. I’m waiting for us to find our 9/12 again and that “profound purpose larger than the self-kind of understanding.”
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