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Covid19 Journey Day 35


April 25, 2020

April 25, 2020
Today’s observation – the future needs to become global. There is so much melding of synergy between countries and cultures, we are woven together with economics, entertainment, health, politics and finances.    I say this while sitting in a tiny global village of foreigners nested in the Caucasian-prone Midwest. How few years ago were the newly arriving residents considered foreign too? Our communication/journalists network works best when the lines that artificially divide us are allowed to thin. Global issues require global collaborative problem solving. It benefits us to look wider than the American Way when dealing with things like the pandemic and following global recession.  After all, the American Way is the world’s way.  Once we severed generational connections to place, where earth, wind, and water shaped not only our culture but our biochemistry, we surrendered much of what produces geopolitical identity. It is in the water. And as we have mingled with pilgrims from other places, like our parents and grandparents a singularity of purpose or character has had to evolve or become vestigial. It is for this reason, as I look for news of useful input about matters like the current health crisis, I have my eyes and ears trained on leaders that are not mansplaining the scene. I listen to Jacinda Arden, the millennial prime minister of New Zealand, and Chancellor Angela Merkel, the great mother from Germany.  I appreciate the way they can humanize the analysis of the science surrounding the new virus, and how they use it in their approaches when asking citizens to cooperate with important measures. (Of course, these two have to wrestle with alligators too). Still it is very gratifying to read about their thoughtful responses as compared with totalitarian methods like those of Narendra Modi’s or Jair Bolsonaro.  As far as I’ve been able to assess, extended heavy-handed mandates to rally the will of the people usually backfires with counterproductive consequences like neighborhood infighting or detrimental and polarized acting out.  We do not need this now. 

But I want to redirect this rant toward some lighter moments of homogenization from the day. It is a Saturday and a chilly and damp one, at that.  I decided it is time to cultivate a canasta culture, so I start by teaching a bevy of bright Vietnamese students this card game with Uruguay roots. To be fair, I did warn them that canasta can be engaging to the point of addiction.  They chimed in unison, teach us now! Joining us in the commons were Moroccan girls binging on a new Grey’s Anatomy season as they fast for Ramadan.  Meanwhile, a Chinese couple has prepared a delicious supper for us, and a couple of Mexican men delivered soil for our garden boxes.  In this picture, I see us as either all foreigners or are all citizens of the Earth. This is what we have always been, growing deeper with laminations of worldliness.  Maybe our growing populations, affluence and efficiencies in travel bring us together as never before. Nonetheless, here we are, and the viruses breaking loose from their traditional hosts jump around the world because we do.  They can be a strange and useful mirror.

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