Better Off?

In response to a social media post that spoke to the struggles of 2020, one comment read something like this: “The stock market is doing great, and because of the stimulus checks, we have an additional $1200 in our savings account this week. Life seems pretty good to me.”

 

As I read those words, I thought, he does have a point. In addition, the Ohio State Buckeyes are playing for a national championship. Both the Buffalo Bills and the Cleveland Browns are in the NFL playoffs for the first time in forever. We’ve had a mild winter so far, and were treated to a white Christmas. Writing in the soft light of the Christmas tree on the first Tuesday morning in January, I’m breathing in the goodness of life. So, beyond the Brown’s coaches being out with COVID and a mob scene at the U.S. capitol, why my unease?

 

When considering the effectiveness of political leadership and the ensuing economic conditions, often the measuring stick used by individuals, even if unspoken, is this: Am I better off than I was a year ago? According to Carmen Ang in the Visual Capitalist, between the stock market’s bottom in March and December 2020, a group of U.S. billionaires can answer yes to that question, growing their wealth by 57% on average – 57% 0f a billion dollars is . . . Since Larry and I saved money on eating out, going to the movies, and vacationing this past year, we could say we’re a bit ‘better off’ than we were a year ago too – that is, if we define ‘better off’ simply in terms of our personal financial stability. 

 

Yet as I reflect on my personal values, I realize that “am I better off?’ is not the question I want to measure my life by. Instead, I must ask, are the most vulnerable among us ‘better off’? 

 

Consider the life of Abdo Sayid, the four-year-old boy Nicholas Kristof wrote about this past week. When brought to the hospital in Aden, Yemen, Abdo weighed fourteen pounds. He wasn’t crying. “That’s because children who are starving don’t cry or even frown. Instead, they are eerily calm; they appear apathetic, often expressionless. A body that is starving doesn’t waste energy on tears.” Within days, the emaciated boy died of starvation. Famine, nearly eradicated within the last few years, has returned.

 

In years past, such a painful image has led to a worldwide humanitarian response. But in today’s COVID-infected world, an overwhelming sense of compassion fatigue has set upon us, and I see that descending into my own life. For almost a year, we’ve been urged to limit our interactions with other people, and we’ve (mostly) been compliant with that counsel. But what this has done for me is to draw my circle into a tight knot, and if something doesn’t impact “me and mine,” the twinge of compassion I still feel may no longer lead to action on my part. 

 

That’s when I most need the reminder of community, the component of life that COVID has stripped from us. This week, I needed to hear the witness of Cori Bush, Missouri’s newest congressional representative. “I’m a nurse, pastor, single mom, and Ferguson-made activist . . . I’ve survived sexual assault, police abuse, domestic violence, and being unhoused and uninsured. That’s not a unique pain I carry. It’s one that many of us live with each day. Today I take my seat in Congress to fight for a world where nobody has to endure that pain.”

 

Writing in the Washington Post, Monica Hesse expresses it well: “Empathy is a muscle. It would do all of us good to strengthen it . . .  and that means not just reflecting on our experiences but exercising  our imaginations . . . The goal is not to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes; the goal is to recognize that someone else’s shoes may never fit you and yet they still deserve to be warm and dry.” Even in our pandemic-induced disconnection from each other, let’s not let the pull toward self-preservation, as human as that is, overpower our compassion toward each other, near or far.