I don’t know, but neither do you. Nor do they. No one does. But we’re all in this together. And I find some bizarre sense of comfort in the true universality of that fact. Never have my friends (and strangers) from every corner of the globe all been threatened by, focused on and confronting the same issue or hardship simultaneously. I talk daily to my ride-or-dies of many years in Malaysia and Peru, Israel and Ghana, France and Australia, Brazil and Belgium, and everywhere in between. And every individual is in a similar state, albeit at slightly different places on the timeline — not knowing what is happening, what to make of it or what will come, though fully aware of the gravity of this situation wherein the world has fundamentally shifted on its axis.
We are not facing the anxiety, fear, uncertainty and massive paradigm shifts alone — or even as any one community or region, state or nation, business or industry, segment or cross-section of the population. Collective humanity is being forced to deal physically and psychologically with the unknown risks and mobilize unprecedented response to the global Coronavirus outbreak, working decisively, although in uncharted territories, to navigate, brace for and mitigate the exponential growth, sweeping devastation, medical overload and economic havoc, particularly as conditions continue to worsen inevitably.
All of us are rightfully concerned with health and safety — sheltering in place, self-quarantining and social distancing as precautionary measures, as well as in compliance with government policies to stop the spread and flatten the curve, such that we give medical systems and vulnerable patients a fighting chance. Everyone is questioning what life, work, education, normalcy look like amid these wild times and whether we’ll have a job, a school, a stocked pantry, a local downtown, a routine next week, next month or on the other side. All is in a state of mysterious flux; no one has clarity about outcomes or timelines, even prospects or likelihood; every family, business, community and country is encountering new challenges; nothing is untouched, unaffected, unscathed by this pandemic. Never has it been more clear that we are all one, interconnected and interdependent.