Dear Neighbor in America and beyond
I know this is a trying time for us all. Only yesterday life seemed normal. Everyone was going to work. Kids were in school. We came home. Cooked and had dinner and readied ourselves for the rest of the week. Except a few weeks ago, when we heard about a virus in Wuhan China and how it was rapidly killing a lot of people. Then suddenly, it spread, all over. And within a few weeks, our world in the western hemisphere of the globe was shut down. And now we are all wondering what will happen next. The stocks have plunged, wiping out some of our retirement plans and savings. The stores and businesses that employ us have closed. Many of us won’t be making the next paycheck needed to make our rents and buy our groceries. There is lack of milk, bread, egg, rice and toilet paper on the shelves. We are all scrambling to keep our fridge stocked. Many of us even those with health insurance, can’t get daily care because the hospitals are attending only to life or death issues. Suddenly, the neatly packaged ‘devil’ we know has become a bigger, chaotic, havoc wreaking devil we don’t know. We don’t know how to live if the traffic stops, work stops, paychecks stop, and life comes to a halt. We are worried that this is the end of the world.
This virus has shut down many borders but perhaps it will open up our minds to the reality
I want to take this opportunity to share with you my fellow American brothers and sisters and Westerners in general in Europe and other western hemispheres where disruption of life is rare, that in my humble opinion, this is not the end of the world. It is a rough few months that we will endure, and come out of. I know for many of you this is unprecedented, and that this is going to cause great emotional, personal, professional, vocational and economic unrest. So much so that people might get to the point of insanity. I realize how hard catastrophes are. I too have endured some catastrophes over my lifetime. As a kid growing up in Pakistan I witnessed a few dangerous wars in the 60s and 70s. I saw bombs fly and nightly air fights in the sky as we hunkered down in mud trenches in case there was a bombardment. Months went by without proper electricity, food or water. On normal days, I saw and suffered what many endured, regular malaria epidemics, cholera and dysentery outbreaks, floods, earth quakes. Not to mention the daily blight of children who lived without shelter or food; so many children died of dehydration or unclean water.
You see my dear fellow American, life in the third world is a daily disaster and when you grow up witnessing or being part of it, you develop a certain mental ruggedness, or emotional muscle if you will. You don’t expect things to be rosy or normal all the time. Quite the contrary, you pray for continued bouts of normalcy, without undue disaster, as an exception not a rule. You thank the Almighty when you have a normal day without sickness, destruction, disease or poverty. You see my fellow American, we in the third world, are used to life as a constant hurdle race. Where you brace yourself daily for the worst case scenario. Where each day is a war against death and disease.
So many children in the world died before the coronavirus outbreak from simple malnutrition because we can’t seem to grow enough food and distribute it worldwide where some countries have ample supply and others can’t get their hands on a glass of clean water. This virus has shut down many borders but perhaps it will open up our minds to the reality of how disastrous a living zone our world really is, and how oblivious, we in the West, are to the trials of millions of fellow human being trying to make it in a jungle where you literally have to hunt and be a scavenger for food, medicine and shelter.
I want this outbreak to serve as a lesson to us, that the life we take for granted is up for grabs at a moment’s notice. We are all pawns of a universal mechanism which can throw a curve ball anytime, without notice, and wipe out the structures we hold so dear and take for granted.
But I don’t think the coronavirus will wipe us out. I think it will take its toll over the next few months and gradually we will rebuild our lives. That is, life as we think it should be or was. But for the rest of the world, the inequity, poverty, disease, death, warn and destruction will continue, long after the virus has come and gone. And that is what we should become more cognizant of. The fact that more than half of the earth’s population lives daily as if it were infected by a virus much stronger than coronavirus. The man made virus called mal-distribution of economic development, health, food, and human rights. That virus is what we have to eradicate in the long run, once we are allowed out of the house again, to begin over.
Think about the children living in war-torn countries where at a moment’s notice, the little square footage of earth, they call home, is bombarded out of existence. Think of the millions of children who die because they can’t get clean water. Think about that while we wonder what to cook for dinner tonight, because the menu suddenly got limited to either chicken or beef, not both.
All suffering is a matter of perspective. Trials are an opportunity for us to become aware of how the other half lives. Let this furlough from freeway commutes and long lines at the grocery stores over filled with food we throw away, be a wake up call that all is not well with the world even when all is well with our world. Let’s take these weeks to analyze and empathize with how the rest of the world lives on a daily basis, faced with lack of food and bare human necessities. Then, let’s allow ourselves to evolve in our empathy for those who live daily in death, poverty and disease.
Sincerely,
A Pakistani American.
The writer holds two Masters degrees, MA Communication and MSc Clinical Psychology, Certified Therapist she authored ‘It Takes A Village To Rape A Child’