#Coronapocalypse day 4

A thread about relationships and community

Something strange is happening in my twitter feeds and mentions. Somehow, I'm having conversations with people I wouldn't before--conservatives and such. But we're not exchanging insults: we're exchanging information.

This is a moment of survival.

Talking to people I disagree with politically is... weird. Especially in that, as Donna Mertens argues, it's not that we all have different realities. We all have different opinions about reality, and the people with the most power get their opinions heard and validated.

But there is a shift in reality which requires more than opinion. It requires action. #covid19 is not a joke, it's deadly, and it's coming for us--for those it hasn't come for yet, anyway. The reality is simple: survival. Opinions about survival may differ but we instinctively

understand that we cannot do it alone. We need others. If only for information. I saw an unverified video of Wuhan people screaming into the night. Some of them say things I don't understand. Others just scream. You see in that minute the essential nature of us:

we are social animals. We cannot survive without each other. We cannot make it without a community to support us.

I'm developing strange (for me) relationships around this catastrophe. Twitter accounts I wouldn't pay attention to are now features of my daily life.

I don't really know these people. Probably never will. But the solidarity building between us, in our little makeshift covid community, is becoming very important to me, very quickly.

Today I woke up thinking I should start knocking on my neighbours' doors.

Start a Facebook or What'sApp group for my building. Maybe I'm the only one who's prepping for this. I doubt it. Maybe if we are not afraid of talking to each other, we will go through what is coming as a community. We'll need it.

I'll start asking people for their phone numbers. Just casually, saying I'm starting a building support system, for people to ask for flour or help building a bookcase or something.

It's a moment of survival, but it's also a moment for rediscovering why community matters.

It's a moment to reconnect to people in authentic ways, in ways that are about not just what you can do for me, but how we can help each other thrive. About exchanging goods rather than buying them. About sharing expertise and skills and time. Mostly time.

Because at the end of all this, when thousands if not millions of us are dead, we will have to rebuild our sense of humanity. After so much loss, what will be left from the charred remains of the 20th century? What will we do with the chance to make something new?