“We’re All In This Together”With A Hint Of“Life On The Other Side”BY GWEN LEWISI didn’t yet know for how long our lives would be changed or how deeply society would be cut. As always, whenholding uncertainty, I knew it was time to talk to God. About a week into Philadelphia’s stay-at-home order, safelyat home with my family, I got in bed to pray. For the first time, I didn’t know what to pray for.It’s not that I’m unfamiliar with prayer. Growing up as an anxious child, in a religious household I was taught earlyto cast my burden on the Lord. So, I did. At 4 years old, when I watched my mom survive and recover from brainsurgery, I spent so much time in prayer that I must have exhausted my preschool vocabulary. Communicating myworries and wishes to God became second nature.I developed a go-to line to cover myself and my loved ones. Some variation of that line has appeared in my nightlyprayer for over 20 years. “Please help me and everyone I love wake up safely in the morning.” I used it in the earlydays of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, I’d read a headline or watch the news. My loved ones were healthy, butaround the world, each morning, a suffocating amount of people weren’t waking up.Something about my staple line started to feel empty and selfish. I needed to try to protect more than just my circle.It morphed. “Please help as many people as possible wake up safely tomorrow morning.” “Please help all thosegrieving to somehow find peace.” “Please help this to end, illogically soon, so the maximum amount of people’sloved ones, including my own, can still be here tomorrow morning.”The current world has a pervasive aura of fear and grief. While it’s not directly my own, I can’t escape helping tobear it. We say pandemic. Really, we mean prolonged trauma. No matter where we are, we’re having a collectiveexperience. With shared experience, comes understanding. With understanding, comes compassion. Collectivecompassion looks like me, in Philly, dissatisfied with praying for the safety of only those that I love and needingto include the wellbeing of strangers. It looks like my definition of people “I love” being expanded to just mean“humans.” I started to think: what if, on the other side of this united vulnerability, is a united fellow feeling?Revisiting my toolbox for managing anxiety, I reread The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle. In the chapter, “TheMeaning of Surrender: When Disaster Strikes,” he explores pain as a vehicle for a rise in consciousness that joltsthe singular human out of their egotistical bubble and into a larger experience, shared by every living soul. Heencourages us to know that there’s another side to tragedy, “a complete alchemical transmutation of the basemetal of pain and suffering into gold.”If the only way to save the lives of people we don’t even know is to make changes to the way we live our own,then maybe more of us will feel less divided. If we must sit alone with ourselves in this reality, then maybe we’llbecome more connected to the lifegiving energy that flows within us, so much so that we can recognize it in thosewho are, otherwise, nothing like us. Maybe, on the other side of this tragedy, the gold will be us, continuing to beso keenly aware of the experiences of other beings that we still feel tenderly enough to send to them well wishes,through prayer or whichever medium we hold sacred even when there’s no immediate danger.38
“WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER”39