Letting your eyes do what your arms and hands can’t.

I wrote this on the bus ride home after work. I think I wrote it on the day prior to my last day in the office, before the virus put all of our lives on a different trajectory. I had forgotten about this piece and found it very strange to read it two months later. I think I put pen to paper, well, really fingers to the keyboard on my iphone, because deep down the world was slowly changing and I knew that. I don’t think I fully understood how it was changing, but looking back, I think I knew it. I even saw the changes in very simple but subtle ways during my “pre-shelter in place” days in downtown, NYC. Like, seeing more people wearing masks even though masks were not required at that point, signs advertising hand sanitizer at cost if you bought a certain amount in food (restaurants were already hurting), and increasingly empty shelves at the Whole Foods across the street.

Although this piece is two months old, and not really finished, I share what my heart was unloading on that express bus ride home that day. I share because maybe in your own way you were unloading your heart too, two months ago. Maybe we all were unloading our hearts in some way to help us in that moment and help us prepare for the moments ahead.

Here goes….

The tables were empty except for two quiet diners. I headed right to the counter without having to stake a place in line. My lunch was prepared for me right away. I tried to engage the young lady working the counter but she did not seem to want to chat it up. I quietly understood. The place was so empty. I grabbed my lunch and walked to the door not having to squeeze past the line, a line that did not exist . I walked in and left in 5 minutes. Record time.

Stepping into one of my favorite places for lunch the other day was a quick reminder of our new normal, our COVID-19 normal.

What I saw before I got my lunch, before the emptiness smacked me in the face, was so much important though. As long as we have inhabited this planet, challenges, tragedies, and disasters have always reared their ugly head. Every single generation has them and every single generation also has the stories to prove it because stories are formed by what we see.

We shouldn’t shake hands, we shouldn’t hug, we shouldn’t peck each other on the cheek, but we should open our eyes wider than we ever have before. Let your eyes do what your arms and hands can’t. Let them keep us connected. Connected now and for years to come. Let’s record the moments, together.

Before I left the office for lunch, I made a very conscious decision to take in my surroundings, not looking for people wearing masks or struggling with overfilled grocery bags, I was looking for normal, desperately looking for normal. I was looking for something that would make me smile. I was looking for something that no virus could ever dampen.

And there they were, the dad and the daughter. Hand in hand. She was wearing a pink backpack on her back and speaking feverishly to her dad. The world to them at that moment wasn’t a virus world, it was our normal world. They passed me shuffling along. They were just being a kid and a dad and I got the sense they were making plans. Whatever they did, I hope it was fun.

The group of tourists were ahead of me, a family of five, all simultaneously pointing toward the Freedom Tower, walking brisquely, and smiling. Just smiling and looking. They were on a mission. They were taking it it all in, virus or no virus. They were living.

Someday we will tell the stories about this pandemic, so let’s make sure we have the whole story to tell. Not just half the story. The story about the virus will be so straightforward. The others won’t. Give your hands a rest, but please open your eyes.

Find that dad, find that family, find the stories.