What if, centuries from now, historians think of the coronavirus not as a pandemic that killed millions of people but as a purifier… the catalyst that finally brought humanity together and got them to agree on global warming.    How cool would that be?

Think back to what we were reading about before Covid-19 grabbed all the headlines.  Everyday, somewhere in the world, someone doing something absolutely horrifying to someone else… blowing up a marketplace, shooting diners in a restaurant, driving into crowds of tourists, setting fire to villages.  And all for the stupidest of reasons… the color of one’s skin, the language one speaks, the God one prays to.  And then the group behind the atrocity announces to the media that they are the ones that did it… bragging about all the pain and suffering they have caused to fellow human beings. “Hey, guys, it was us.  Aren’t we great?  We’re the ones you should be afraid of.”  Can you believe it?

But it’s more than that.  Even before coronavirus, life for many was a touch and go affair.   Earth’s resources are distributed so unequally as to be unimaginably cruel and unfair.  Some people have so much more than they need while others have so much less than the minimum needed for survival.  It is estimated that 1 in 9 people on Earth go to bed hungry every night, while almost 9 million people die of malnutrition every year.  How inhumane is that?

Inhumanity spreading around the globe… like a pandemic.  Person against person, tribe against tribe, religion against religion, culture against culture, country against country, race against race.  How long can we continue in this direction?  If we can’t get people to agree to stop randomly killing each other, how are we going to get them to agree on basic humanitarian efforts?

Just like the virus destroys the being on which it lives, humans are destroying the very planet on which we live.  Our oceans filled with plastic garbage, our air filled with toxic chemicals, nuclear waste buried beneath the soil, forests being destroyed, species going extinct, and the balanced ecology that has nurtured all life from the very beginning starting to shudder under rising temperatures.   Global warming?  We can’t even agree on that!

Well how about  shutting down a worldwide pandemic that could kill tens of millions of people and destroy economic and social life as we know it for decades to come.  It is becoming clear we must put aside our differences and focus on the connections between us if we are to beat Covid-19. “Never before have I found a situation where how I behave so dramatically impacts your health and how you behave so dramatically impacts my health,” said Dr. Sanjay Gupta, neurosurgeon and CNN medical advisor, on a recent The Late Show.   And he added. somewhat philosophically, “We are co-dependent on each other in a way that I’ve never seen before.  There is an obligation here.  If I don’t engage in these good behaviors for me, then I should do it for… the people around me.”

Yes.  This is a moment in time when humanity is learning we are connected in the most invisible and intimate of ways.   Think… not just for me… but for all of us.  As presidential candidate Bernie Sanders put it during a televised debate… “If there was ever a moment when the entire world is in this together, this is that moment.”

Let’s hope he is right, that not only are we in this together, but we know we are in this together.  It’s a lesson we have to learn if we want the planet to survive. And a big step on the road to New Consciousness… the next step in human evolution.

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It’s like an episode of Star Trek.  As the show opens, starship Enterprise has been taken over by an invisible energy field that is messing with the main computer, warp drive and life support systems.  It is also making people sick, with one even dying… a crew member we’ve never seen before.  The crew has an hour to use all their logic and science and experience of working together to figure out how to eliminate the alien and keep it from growing before it infects them all and destroys the ship.

Sound familiar?  That’s exactly where we’re at with the coronavirus.   At the moment, our entire planet is surrounded by a cloud of living energy so subtle and unique, that without special tests we are not even able to know for sure that it’s there.  We do know, however, it makes us sick, some more than others, some of us even die, especially older ones.  It can live for days, in the air, on different surfaces and temperatures, and has hooked onto our species to help it spread around the planet.  If we don’t take action, it will grow and infect us all.

Its impact has been incredible.  Even for those of us fortunate enough not to have met Covid-19 in person, so much of what we used to think of as normal is no longer part of of our lives.  As of this moment, around the world, millions of people are living under quarantine, both government and self-imposed.  We are staying indoors, working from home if we can, losing income if we can’t, missing doctor’s appointments, avoiding contact… practicing  social distancing… disinfecting… washing hands over and over like it’s a case of… life or death.  Events have been called off, religious services cancelled, schools closed, travel affected, jobs lost, sports seasons curtailed, factories and businesses closed, not to mention store shelves running out of bare essentials like toilet paper.  Toilet paper?  Really?

How long will this go on?  Who knows.   We may have more than an hour to sort it all out, but we really have no time to spare. We don’t even know for sure if the decisions we’re making will have the desired effect. What we do agree on is that…

“I don’t want meet up with Covid-19 any closer than I already am.  If I’m sick, I want to recover.  If I’m not, then I don’t want to experience what happens next…  one moment fine, and the next, coughing, fever, trouble breathing?  Then what?  Do I have it?  Now what do I do?  How did I get it? Will I give it to others?  I’d want to know.  I’d want to be tested.  This is serious.  It could be fatal.  I don’t want that”.

What we are seeing is individuals of all social classes putting aside political, religious, economic, social, cultural, language, racial, and gender viewpoints to join in focus on this one threat to humanity.   Took some longer than others to get on board and not all contribute as much or as well.   However, everyone is now taking Covid-19 seriously, no-one is laughing it off.  Underneath our differences, we are in agreement on what we want to happen next.  This is truly an evolutionary moment.

As a result of coronavirus, we have learned that what we do to for our health can have a major effect not just on ourselves, but for everyone else on the planet.  Literally… via our six degrees of separation… everyone else!!!   My actions can help keep the virus alive to infect another day, or help wind it down and minimize its impact.   And, not surprising, what I do affects you just as what you do affects me.   In the words of MSNBC commentator, Van Jones, “I am only going to be as healthy as you let me be.”

So thanks to coronavirus, it appears we now recognize that our actions affect each other… that we are all connected. Humanity is finally seeing ‘I’ to ‘I’.  Wow!  Look how far we’ve come.

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