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If enough people in a given population are individually protected from a certain infection, everyone benefits. Basically, a microbe cannot circulate in enough hosts if those potential hosts are immune. So the microbe doesn’t circulate, or at least not as much. That’s good for people without any individual protection. The herd shelters them.

Unfortunately, in the early days of COVID-19, none of us has much sanctuary. The herd is actually unsafe. Consequently, we spend a lot of time alone, separated, wary of each other, surfaces we’ve touched, even the air we’ve commonly breathed.

Earlier this week, while hiking in the forest not too far from my house, a very friendly dog bounded toward me. “She likes to lick,” the owner called. I stood still, hands in my pocket. The dog gave me the “Come on, I know you want to pet me” look, then gave up with a shrug when I didn’t reach out and comply.

Antibodies. We all wish we had them. Because antibodies, of the right kind and in sufficient quantities, means personal safety, security. Individual immunity. The chance to pet people’s dogs and not shrink away from dogs’ owners when we are all out in public.

Human immune systems are pretty complex. There are lots of parts and each part has subparts, with those subparts containing layers of componentry. Some cells are fighters. Others are helpers. The further one goes into the study of it all the more technical the names become. Most have numbers, almost as if scientists gave up trying to name everything discovered in a human host designed to stave off external invaders, large and small. Numbers and wordless letters also maintain a certain neutrality; the soldiers within our immune systems can sometimes get hyper-excited and attack native tissue by mistake. “Auto-immunity” is not a fun thing to experience, to which many people who suffer from various illnesses can attest.

Walking in the forest following my recent close encounter with a friendly four-legged standard poodle, it occurred to me that there may be more to the concept of “herd immunity” than we’ve envisioned. The public health advantage is clear; non-immune individuals benefit from the immunity of others. But suppose we play roles in the common immunologic landscape other than independent physical forms teeming with internal serologic security staff? Suppose we ourselves are walking and talking parts of the planet’s immune system?

We are more than a species, co-existing on a planet teetering on the edge of disarray. We are a collection of individual constituent pieces. And we each have parts to play.

Some of us are like B and T lymphocytes; we carry broad memories of past assaults on ecosystems and life forms, ready to identify trends and communicate threats. Others are NK or natural killer cells; we serve as emergency responders. There are the cleaners and waste removers (the “lymphaticists”), the filterers and producers (our “bone marrowists”, “thymusists”, and “splenics”), the supporters (our “helper cells”) and then a whole host of specialists: people perhaps like you and me who have targeted abilities to perform key functions in the world, people who think we don’t make much of a difference until a need arises that we are personally and uniquely qualified and able to recognize and address, people who depend on each other for our common survival and who, without the ability to rely on that interdependence, would not individually survive.

We are, many of us, our species’ – and our world’s – antibodies.

Think about that, the next time you look at someone or some other living creature and you wonder about her or its place on this planet. We got here, to this point in time, together, as a gathering of species and possibilities, not because of our similarities but instead because of our differences. Sometimes we hurt each other; sadly, we have a proclivity for auto-immunity at a macroscopic level. Most of the time, however, we help and support each other at the micro level, in the small things we say and do, in the myriad of things that we sometimes refrain from saying and doing.

I regret that I did not feel safe to reach out and pet that poodle the other day. But the dog didn’t seem worried. It bounded off beyond me, secure in the awareness that there was a greeting still to come further down the trail. Somehow, it knew what my COVID-19 confounded consciousness caused me to forget: we are a herd.

Winter Carnival, 1978. I was a freshman in college and everyone was going skiing. Now I hadn’t grow up around snow – at least not snow present on the ground during most of winter, not snow that piled in drifts on mountains, not snow that people skied on. In fact, I had only skied once before and that was on a hill that a person could sled down almost as fast as ski.

My lack of experience, however, did not matter. The guys in my dorm were heading out to the local ski area and they asked me to come along. So I bought a very used pair of boots and skis, tucked my legs inside long underwear and old pair of jeans, and unpacked a hat that was uglier than it was bright.

I was not the only inexperienced skier in the group. There was Spider, my roommate; he hailed from the west coast. And there was Robert. An Australian, Robert had been hitchhiking along the east coast and, based on a series of random rides, had found his way to our dorm and some vacant floor space for his sleeping bag.

Apparently, the conditions were not very good; many of the runs had exposed ice. “Not much powda,” Robert noted to one of my friends. “Those skis are pretty long,” he added. The measurement comment was intended for me. My battered skis reached well over my head.

“Fifty bucks,” I smiled. I shook a black boot at him. “And that included the boots.”

“Do they fit?” someone asked. I shrugged. “Fifty bucks,” someone else answered for me.

With that we clambered aboard the chair lift. If you’ve ever learned to ski, you know that getting on and off the chair lift can be the most treacherous part of the experience, especially with skis that are too long and with toes that have no feeling. No worries, however. I figured it out, mostly by just jumping into place like some frog without much spring in its legs. Spider wasn’t so fortunate. He managed to fall pretty much every time the chair came swinging into place behind him.

Once atop the first run, the guys who had convinced me to spend fifty bucks on old equipment did not feel compelled to help me figure out how to use it. They raced each other down the hill as if they had skied as long as they’d walked. I also discovered that Australia wasn’t an entirely flat continent; for the most part, Robert seemed to have no trouble keeping up with the others. Before I could wipe the fog off my sun glasses, everyone but Spider was gone. And Spider made me look like I was a pro. While he navigated side to side, advancing downward what seemed to be only a matter of yards each time, I pointed the tips of my extra long skis straight down the hill. When it seemed like I was going faster than I should, I slammed on the brakes in a jump stop, the way I had seen some others do it on the chair ride up. Surprisingly, the technique worked. My confidence was bolstered. “Come on, Spider,” I hollered. “I’ll meet you down there.”

“Down there” was a mid-way section of the hill, one to two hundred yards ahead. Gathering momentum, I spotted a few of my dorm friends gathered together, leaning on their poles. I decided to show off my newfound ability to make an efficient ski stop. :Leave me behind?” I thought. “Well, here comes some powder for you.”

You can get going pretty fast on skis, if you aren’t careful. The speed can cause a novice to misjudge stopping distance. First they were there, pretty far away. Then they were closer, not so far. Yep, those were my dorm mates and, with them, Robert. There was also someone else – girl from California named Muffin. I had never met Muffin. She was beautiful. So were her skis, the ones that I went sliding over at a fairly good clip when the ice that wasn’t powder prevented me from stopping. There was the scraping sound of skis on ice, the realization that I was not going to stop in time but was instead going to pass right through the group, and the look of, well, fear-become-distain that Muffin gave the guy in jeans, fogged sunglasses, and old brown skis who had just sailed across the tails of her pink and yellow skis.

I kept going – once I picked myself up as if I had done exactly what I’d planned to do. It was Robert and Freddy K who followed me. I beat them to the chair lift, and quickly jumped onto an open chair. They managed to almost catch me, getting on the lift a few chairs behind.

That was pretty stupid, I told myself. Well at least I didn’t hit anyone.

Just then another friend hollered as he skied the moguls beneath the chair lift. I looked down to see him lose his balance, lean forward, and flip in the air, landing on his skis, as if it was planned. He continued on, his cheer echoing across the mountain side. And that’s when Robert called out to me, from a few chairs back.

“Hey Mark!” I heard him say, in his distinctively Aussie accent. “You really impressed her with that one, Mark!”

A minute later, he reminded me again of my spectacular feat. “Mark, really impressed her for sure!”

Somewhere behind me, the two of them were laughing hysterically. I was about to turn and say something in a very adolescent male 1970s genre, regardless of who was sitting in the chairs between us, when I heard my name called from a different direction. It was Spider. My roommate had not progressed very far from where I had left him. But he had figured out something important: how to turn. He was still going side to side, from one edge of the run to the other. Except now, each time he successfully got to a tree line and managed to reverse his direction, he let out a loud whoop. Those were real whoops of joy.

It’s strange how a memory can linger. I’ve lived a lot of years since that cold winter day in 1978. And, once or twice during that time, I’ve skied better (although not very much better). Yet despite the decades, I can still hear Robert’s accented call to me up the mountain side, and Spider’s series of whoops to the world, as if it was yesterday. He was a kind person, the traveling Australian; he clearly identified with my discomfort. And Spider may have only completed one run down the hill the entire afternoon. But both had lifelong messages for me that wonderful solitary chairlift ride, a set of hollers and calls which, regardless of the circumstances, were so full of resonance – and so free of time:

1. Don’t try to impress, especially if you aren’t ready.
2. Grow into skills, instead of strapping them on.
3. A girl named Muffin will never talk with you if you gouge the ends of her skis while trying to show off for your friends.
4. Punctuate the turns of life with loud and hearty whoops.

My life has not had a rubicon, a singular moment when who-I-was fell past and who-I-am became forever present.

I’ve thought it has; if asked, my instinct would have been to tell you, before this morning, that, yes, there has been – there must have been – such a precise time or experience in my 22,212 days of being, that I am sure I have crossed a particular biographical then-to-here bridge from which I have never returned. Upon reflection, however, I know that I can identify no solitary and unique transition or point of personal pivot. Without much effort, I can think of many days that have served as critical cruxes in the trajectory of this thing I call my life.

Take today, for example. Easter. The fourth day of Passover in the year 2020. The second Sunday of April during the pandemic named COVID-19. A quiet morning in northern Arizona when the birds announce the arrival of spring despite the unseasonal temperature.

They sound so confident, the birds do. The thermometer reads 40 degrees Fahrenheit and yet the birds sing as if it is seventy. They don’t wear winter jackets or extra layers of clothing. The feathered friends rise with the daylight, they bound from tree to ground to tree, they chatter as if everything is normal. And although I cannot speak their language, I can recognize their refrain. It is a time, they are babbling. It is spring. It is a new day.

Wake up!

“Yes,” I reply, “yes, yes, I am awake.”

Except I am not awake, not really. I am not awake because I begin today with the weight from yesterday. My feet touch the floor with the painful reminder of pandemic. My eyes are blinded by the memory of suffering, of uncertainty. I barely hear the swallows’ song because of the inertia of expectation.

Wake up! the wrens holler. Arise! the robins persist.

Sure, the morning ballads are not necessarily for me. They are for mates, for their flock, their fleet, their throng. They are not all arias of joy. There are messages being shared in the jabbering and clattering. There is avian communication. What do the birds know about human happiness and tragedy? They don’t exist to make me smile, aren’t interested in whether I stay in bed or step outside to enjoy their choral concert. They are programmed to engage in the annual ritual of renewal: spring. They are only concerned about one thing: this morning. Today.

The birds know nothing but the importance of experiencing rebirth.

And therein, of course, lies the meaning within their melody.

When I do well, when I live the moments of my days with an awareness of my place, my positioning in space, the potential for me, little-old-simple-me, to make a difference for you, you-who-I-don’t-always-understand-or-know-how-to-help-and-feel-connected-to, when I stop worrying and wondering if I’ve learned the right morales and messages from my years on this planet, when I realize that religion, rites of the seasons, remembrances of real or confabulated rubicons in the arc of my passage in this form called the human body, when I stop thinking and do more being – that’s when I feel the presence of God, that’s when I enjoy the morning song of spring, that’s when I experience the essence of life, of love, and of simple, subtle, and sweet goodliness.

The warbler’s song has always been for me. Just as my song has always been for you.

Let us listen together. Let us sing as one.

There is no doubt: a pandemic is scary. And serious. Deadly. And dehumanizing. It is one thing to watch a pandemic on the news. It is another to experience it in your own community.

In recent weeks, much of the world has encountered the novel coronavirus named COVID-19, up close and all too personal. People are dying. Families and communities are suffering. We are not used to this. Sure, if you live long enough, you learn that life is not to be taken for granted, that somebody you know or love who is with us one day is sometimes not with us the next. Loss happens, yes. But not at the frequency that is happening now.

This virus moves swiftly. It takes people quickly. And we catch it from each other.

I was hiking in the forest the other day and a jogger passed me from the opposite direction. We both moved off the path, to different sides. Social distancing was rapidly and successfully navigated in the middle of state trust land. Still, I felt as if I should cover my face when he approached me. I mean I was walking and the other guy was running. Plus he was breathing harder than I was. Was six feet enough distance to safely avoid something aerosolized if he spontaneously coughed when we passed?

He didn’t cough. And I didn’t cover my mouth. Instead, I forced myself to remember who I was and who I aspired to be. So I stopped, smiled, and lifted my hand, not toward my mouth and nose but instead in shape of hello. I said hi to the guy, with my open hand. I waved. He nodded.

Within seconds, the moment was gone. We continued on our separate ways. I can’t say how that runner felt but I personally felt better because we had acknowledged each other. We had remained human. There had been a moment, however slight, of recognition. Of acknowledgement. We had not succumbed to fear. Instead, we had offered a gesture of good will.

Of kindness.

What is the average number of people that one person with COVID-19 can infect? I bet you know the answer. Perhaps you also know the average incubation period from virus exposure to symptoms for people colonized or infected with COVID-19 who become sick. You may even know the estimated percentage of people who do not actually become sick despite being “infected”.

But did you know that there is something out there among us right now, something far more contagious than coronavirus, something with an almost instantaneous incubation period, something that can infect and spread among people and populations almost like a wave of thunder or a bolt of lightning?

There is. It’s called kindness.

Think about it. You can look at a person and smile, even with your eyes, and despite the fact that both you and other person are wearing masks, you can see the spontaneous smile reciprocated in that other person’s eyes. The transmission time is almost unmeasurable. And that person – and you as well – can then transmit the same smile and feeling of connection to the next person, and the next, until, before a virus can replicate even once, a ripple of humanity can spread across an entire corner of a community.

Guess what else kindness can do? It can bridge space, and “social distancing”, and email, and even time. Some friends occasionally leave fresh bread on my doorstep. They don’t ring the bell. They don’t stop to say hi. They don’t even wave.

They just leave the bread and text my wife or me that it is there. We see the text. We open the door. There is “no one” there. There is only bread. But there is so so much more. There is thoughtfulness. There is generosity. There is humanity.

There is kindness.

Based on his experience in a concentration camp during World War II, Victor Frankl wrote about the “last of the human freedoms”: to choose one’s attitude.

What attitude do you choose? What attitude might we all remind ourselves to choose during one of the most frightening times in modern history?

Let’s try to choose kindness. And let’s try to spread it as fast and as far as possible.

I miss my mom. She was a constancy in my life, there, always there, ever at the ready. She wasn’t perfect. She wasn’t a person with all the answers. She was simply love. She was someone who worried about and for me. She was a pair of eyes who watched me, saw me. She was, in the end, acceptance.

It is not easy to find acceptance. Family, friends, teachers, coaches, even colleagues represent potential, and usually intermittent, sources. Parents and siblings can powerfully motivate and extend the universe’s embrace. But not everyone is blessed to be born into circumstances in which familial acceptance may blossom. Many children are not so fortunate to have a mother like mine. And many mothers, and fathers, who can provide such security in a child’s life, whether it be biologically their own child or someone else’s, take years, even decades, to mature into the role.

I know that I myself am still doing so.

For example, last night, I was with my youngest daughter and we were descending (in a car) from a high altitude plateau in our state to a warmer valley. The last remnants of the setting sun wrapped themselves like a shaw over the rolling mesas in the distance. It was dark below, inky black. It was greying above, colorless cloud. But in between, almost by an artist’s design, was a vibrant ribbon of orange. Across the distance of space and the solar system, light from our planet’s star was refracted, seemingly perfected, into the jagged gap between land and sky on the horizon.

“Wow,” I said. We had been quiet in the car. There are times to talk with my daughter. There are times to listen. There are also times to just be present.

She watched. She waited. She then lifted her phone and, without replying with words, photographed the view. Then she once again sat still. She held her hands and her hands. She watched. She bore witness.

We sped over asphalt in a moment of still perfection. Nothing need be said. The world had presented us with an unexpected entree into exquisiteness. I felt myself vibrate with the same sensation that I used to get when I caught my mom looking at me.

Life was looking at us. Beauty was welcoming us. There was nothing to do or say. Thoughts, response, movement was unnecessary. Just pure presence was indicated. Shared witness and release. Acceptance.

We can all accept each other. I continue to learn, each day if I am open to it, how important this awareness is. Mentoring can take many forms, some obvious, others more nuanced. There are people with whom we form close bonds. They are others with whom we have but the briefest of interactions. Some folks we see every day. Many we engage with only once during our years of human experience. Each interaction represents a potential mentoring moment. This need not take the form of some effort at wise commentary. It may not necessitate much in the way of work. All that may be required, whether to family member, a friend, or a stranger behind a counter at a supermarket or coffee shop, is awareness. Presence. Eyes that look to see. Ears that open to listen. The dance of acknowledgement at the slightly uplifted corners of the mouth.

We are each others’ keepers. We are also kept by nature, the physical environment, the spiritual fields of our days. We live continuously amidst instantaneous and fleeting artistry. All of it can be nurturing. Every alluring moment of breathless being can be mentoring.

Acceptance reverberates through beauty’s timeless lens. Some magnificence is witnessed. Most is created.

Sometimes at dusk, when the high desert sky is scrubbed clean, heaven and earth become one. The process is both stark and enchanting. As the sun sets in the west, rolling hills and flat-topped mountains lose their identity, morphing from mounds of scrub, tree, and rock into graphical plot lines of time, the areas under their curves no more than inky summations of what was, is, and may still be. Above these shadows, night, starless, polished, and glossy, pulses with infinite possibility. Gradually, if observation cedes to emptiness, the two perspectives merge. The earth extends a slumbering embrace. The sky envelops the terrestrial outreach. Night ascends. Yong wraps itself inside yin. Opposites end.

We live in a world of contrast, of comparison. Differences help us distinguish. Vivid variations enable values to be learned, exercised, and shaped. We see things because of shape, light, and color. We touch and taste the smooth and sharp edges of change. We hear modulation. We smell heterogeneity.

We breathe. First in. Then out. Or out. Followed by in. We assume that out follows in but there is no space for in if out does not happen as well.

Try something. Take a breath in. Not a deep one. Just a small or medium inhalation. What should come next? Should you complete the process of inhaling? Or should you exhale before the next expansion? Does it matter? When you consciously think about that place, the pivot between in and out, does that awareness interfere with the spontaneity of the experience?

There is good in all of us. There is also good’s antithesis. It helps me to recognize each, to know their oppositional existence, to avoid the easy excuses when my thoughts, actions, or spirit are not aligned with the positive, when what I do is not reflective of who I aim or am meant to be. It also challenges me. And unnerves and frightens me. My shortcomings motivate me to be better but they can also encourage me to judge the faults and failings of others. I feel better when I can clearly detect right and wrong. I can tolerate the gravitational pull of physical mass when I am able to feel lifted by the releasing energy of aspirational spirit. This can make me look out, to gaze “there”. Which can cause me to look away from in, from being with “here”. Day can turn proud and boastful. Night can assume a belittled and disparaged place in my life.

But day cannot exist without night. And night cannot play its role without day. My eyes cannot always be open. My sleep cannot refresh unless I reawaken to a new cycle of light.

Breathless release at the border of contrast can help transcend the paradox of being. It can feel freeing to vibrate, even temporarily, at the boundary of understanding and renewal.

When I was teenager, I wanted to be a comedic actor. The desire had not been lifelong; it came upon me, semi-abruptly, in the latter part of high school. I don’t recall if there was a precise moment or motivation for the ambition. I just remember that the longing to inhabit character was suddenly there, a gnawing sensation in my gut, a hole that needed to be filled.

My family didn’t have a frame of reference for this appetite: no one we knew did anything on stage or TV. So it wasn’t clear what I should do with the interest. I was a good student. I played sports – with passable but not excellent results. And I wasn’t even very funny. I loved slapstick humor, sure, cracked up at dumb jokes, and was drawn to watch Laurel and Hardy or Abbot and Costello movies. But I don’t think anyone in my neighborhood would have called me funny. I had spent grade school getting into fights. I was competitive about grades. I was way too serious.

Still, somewhere inside me lurked an inexplicable appetite to act, to be absurd. I took a summer acting class. And, in my senior year of high school, I quit the basketball team to be in the school play. We were doing Shakespeare. Midsummer’s Night Dream. I was Puck.

I was an awful Puck – in a pretty awful staging of the play. I was also a foreigner for the drama folks, the academically intense pseudo-jock interloper who unexpectedly had discovered theatre. My interests were better suited for stand-up comedy than for Shakespeare. Yet there I was, a bit player in a small series of sketches the name of which I cannot recall. And the inhabitant of a key role in a storied piece of Shakespearean literature. My friends sort of shrugged. The basketball team went on to the state playoffs. My parents smiled.

But – consistently during the performances – the audience burst into laughter. Surprisingly, the laughs, were not at my interpretation of Puck (which, to my recollection, could at best be called bizarre). They came in response to a single line that I had in the brief series of sketches. It wasn’t a line I thought was supposed to be funny. And yet, one show after another, it was.

Our lives take unexpected twists and turns. Our interests, opportunities, and identities can sometimes seem alien or inexplicable. Often, we bumble along. We yearn to be part of something bigger than a dreary stream of days of mundane being. We can even burn to do something, to be somebody, that others notice, that anyone notices. To be different. To play a role.

We can be filled with a hunger to have purpose.

Ah, but the world does not offer us a script, at least conspicuously. As adolescents, there isn’t a storyline and character description handed to us. As adults, there can seem to be an absence of storyline, or perhaps a futility to role and responsibility. What is my part? Will I ever learn my lines? Does it matter if people don’t laugh, cry, or smile in response to my performance?

“The universe is universing again,” a friend likes to say. We laugh at the expression – with an unspoken just maybe awareness. Sometimes the world does indeed seem to move us about. Sometimes I find myself in life scenes and scenarios that seem to follow a plot. The experience makes me want to stop, to turn and ask for direction. Except there aren’t any words written on cue cards. There isn’t anyone positioned offstage to whisper me my next line. And there isn’t an audience watching knowingly, a gallery whose response I can predict based on what their predecessors did yesterday. There is only now. Here. There is only my interpretation. Today.

I would have done better in high school to take an improv class. Looking back, I can see that the young man who wanted to make people laugh was a shy, uncertain, hopeful kid who needed to learn confidence, skills for interacting with others, and the ability to adapt. He didn’t really want a script. He wanted reassurance in the importance of creativity, experience in the art of spontaneity. He wanted to find safety through the shared embrace of the unknown. He yearned to laugh, yes – but with others.

That kid is still trying to fill the intermittently achy emptiness of the unknown. He feeds it with a variety of foods. Many are nourishing. But one of the best sources of sustenance remains the joy of the smile, the silly joke, the belly laugh. And the wonder of doing so with someone else.

Hunger is meant to be shared.

There is a stretch of highway just outside of my town that I frequently use, to bypass the busier city streets. Two miles of pressed asphalt, it is only the space between two exits on a busy interstate. Using it shortens the commute home. But the road is aging; the shortcut can be a bumpy ride. And so, after scores of trips, I’ve learned where the bumps, craters, and mini-crevasses lie so that gently, yet with purpose, I weave my wheels first right, then left, then in alternating style as I try to avoid the road’s assaults on rim and rubber while remaining in the same lane. To someone traveling behind me, I must sometimes seem to be impaired. Perhaps only when they bang into a hole that I’ve try to avoid do they understand what it is I am up to.

Occasionally I make it through those two miles of highway unscathed. That gets a smug smile or relieved sigh. More typically though, despite my best efforts, one of the dreaded momentum jarrers jabs me. The impact reverberates across frame of both automobile and occupant. It sharpens my focus on the stretch of pavement ahead.

They are out there, the perturbations and imperfections in life’s surfaces, the divots and indecencies surprising our daily activities. The potholes.

It is impressive how quickly one can open up. Seemingly without warning, a piece of the world that was smooth yesterday becomes a disrupter today. The change can be sudden. It can cause harm. It can feel unfair.

I don’t know about you but I still can get offended when one of life’s potholes presents itself. What did I do to deserve that? I was just moving along calmly, minding my own business, maybe even enjoying a moment or two of calm and peace. Then wham. Reality wrecks the serenity. Tranquity cedes the stage to strife.

The material world ages, sure. And our lives do not come with guarantees. But it would be nice to know what we can depend on. It would seem just to be able to rely on the same rules of the road from one day to the next.

We know this cannot be so. We understand that we shouldn’t expect tomorrow to honor our efforts from today. We’ve heard that attachment can lead to suffering.

Still, we expect. We traverse the diurnal patchwork of repaired behaviors and pathways and we adapt. We attach. We suffer.

I am learning to integrate some symbols of release into my circadian rituals and rhythms. It can be something visual: a small Buddha, a Catholic prayer card, a picture of my children when they were young, a single word on a piece of paper. It can also be a pattern: saying the words ‘thank you’ when my feet touch the floor each morning, taking a deep breath before I eat my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, touching a piece of sculpture or a crystal each time I pass. The point of the exercise is not to have new routine but to have less. It is to remind me to pause, to smile, to wake up. To be.

Life will always have potholes. Some of them are and will be more serious than others. It is nice when, because of either my navigation skills or the simple flow of the universe, I am able to avoid them. It is best, however, when I am prepared to bounce through and out of them, without taking the experience too personally. Smooth passage now is no assurance of a bump-free future. And a moment-pounding present is not a guarantee of a discord-filled tomorrow. I know the distinction, intellectually. I still need plenty of cues and traffic signs, emotionally and spiritually.

So if you see me weaving down my daily life commute, careful that you don’t necessarily follow the same path: my skills are under continuous development. Sadly, I still head straight into holes that yesterday I knew were there. Besides, I may following someone else whose courage and aplomb I admire, someone else who I’m hoping has figured out the best route to safety and smooth sailing.

Someone like you.

We all look for signs. What is our role? Should we act or observe? Do we have purpose or is what we believe to be purpose simply ego wearing the mask of good intention?

It is time to get over ourselves. Our world strains under the weight of a challenge that weakens our collective will to endure. We may be afraid. We may be pridefully optimistic. We may even feel paralyzed.

We must be. We must act, in ways small and large. We must help each other.

Over the past week, I have found my emotions swinging like the weight at the end of a large pendulum. I engage in community, sensing and responding to opportunity to catalyze collaboration; that makes me feel sound, part of the flow of humanity. I nudge and prod systems and leaders to embrace common planning, to look ahead at where the stresses on our collective structures will be instead of where they may be now; that makes me feel unstable, uncertain, a voice perhaps out of tune with others.

And yet there is no conductor for the current concert. So many are playing in tune but not in harmony. I hear no unifying melody. It seems that others cannot hear one either.

So what can I do, one single and rather simple soul? When should my voice sing and when should it be silent?

I read two beautiful quotes this morning, when trying to be without thought. Obviously, my mind is unable to settle my eyes as they seek insight during the crisis we have named COVID-19. While the mind sought brief respite in thoughtlessness, the senses found the following:

“Everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light.” (Ephesians, 5: 13)

“The best way out is always through.” (Robert Frost)

Each quote feels relevant. In fact, they seem complementary. This is all about light and vision. It is about seeing a way forward. For the only way to arrive is to travel. And the only way to travel is as light.

You – each and every one – are embodiments of light. Of good. Of cooperative and collective purpose. “Who am I to engage, to help, to contribute?” you may ask. That is not the question. What am I when I do not? Consider that question instead. When I am stationary, when I am alone, when I am afraid to offer who I am to the common enterprise of where we all may go – I am darkness. When I worry excessively about purpose versus ego, I am ego obstructing purpose, inertia pulling “in” rather than momentum moving “out”, “through”.

There are heroes in our midst. You are such heroes. Every day I see, feel, and grow in the glow of your light, your courage, your commitment to helping humanity and our world be better. So many of your engagements, be they quiet words of comfort or clarion calls for collaborative change, are meaningful and inspiring. Your prayers, your ideas, your actions small and large – they are inspiring. They help things become visible. They help the visible become light. They help us see our path through.

Keep shining your light.

It is palpable sometimes, the energy around us. We can enter a place or space and feel something good, or its opposite. This isn’t contrived; there are ways to measure the “feel” of the environment around us, techniques that are scientifically valid to objectify the vibe that is in the air. Living things emit radiation. They absorb it too. We all travel inside and through spheres of electromagnetic waves.

I have become accustomed to seeing myself as a recipient within life’s force fields. Walk into a room, sense its welcome (or lack thereof), and make the appropriate adjustments. Shields are necessary in some places – defensive energy postures that protect. Other spaces afford more safety. The wall of wariness constructed around me need not be so thick when I move within such zones of acceptance.

A recent change in jobs has reminded me that there is a certain selfishness to this pattern of setting responsiveness. It is rather one-sided. Adjusting my level of engagement to situations in a way that only brings positive to positive places and people may shelter me from negativity but does little to enhance the world around me. When like only leans into like, things become more compartmentalized. Each time I withdraw, everything around me becomes more separated, individuated. The more I excel at raising my energy shell, the further I learn to isolate.

A walk in the forest yesterday helped me remember how important it is to give. It is easy to take; there is great safety, at least in the short-term, from inhaling the best from people around me. Who though is recharging those energy givers from whom I am nourished? It is the rare person who can maintain a steadfast posture of positivity amidst the cacophony of callousness that can bombard our senses. Everyone needs an opportunity to thrive. Positive energy – what many refer to as good “chi” – is meant to be shared.

It is fitting that the ponderosa pines reminded me of chi on the first day of Chinese New Year. Nature holds such restorative potential. It needs our protection if we are to continue to receive its benefits for centuries to come. It is critical that I, as one person, restore my own commitment to the cycle of chi in the world.

That’s why I’ve decided to adopt the acronym of c.h.i. for the next cycle of the suns (and moons). And here’s what the pines whispered to me yesterday when I wondered what each letter might stand for:

C – for compassion, caring, and a collaborate commitment to the common good.

H – for honesty, humor, humility, and – above all else – heart.

I – for integrity, intellectual engagement, and inspiration.

At a time when the world feels besieged by ugliness, at the beginning of a cultural and spiritual new year when the headlines pulse over infectious epidemics, at a moment in history when a growing number of people fret over freedoms and physical survival – I personally need something simple to hold onto, something that feels safe while being stimulating, something that reminds me that my life is not just about me but is also about you.

There is a beautiful rhythm to the movement from the Common good, through Heart, with the arrival at Inspiration, a flow the leads with ease and without effort back to compassion and a collaborative purpose. The beginning, middle, and end are connected. There is no beginning, middle, and end to the cycle. There is only continuance.

Chi is meant to be shared. We are meant to be bound with each other.