#8 - what do we owe each other?
#8 - what do we owe each other?
the question we take from 2020 to 2021 and beyond
POV: I’m Hima - a South Asian, medium brown skin, cis-gender, able-bodied, straight woman living as a settler on the Indigenous lands, T’karonto. I was born in Scarborough, raised Gujarati-Jain, middle-class, with English as my first language. My parents immigrated by choice via London and East Africa and are still together. I have two sisters and no extended family living locally. I experience ADHD symptoms. Much of what I write will be informed by some of these lived experiences.
There are four moments from this past year that I am certain I will remember, recall, and draw on during the remainder of my time on earth in this body. Each moment is a fracture in our reality as we knew it. Each a thundering of the blinding light and thick shadow true to the enormity of human nature. Each a mass revelation following tidal waves of emotional upheaval; grief, loss, and shame. Each divine in its demand for attention and transformation.
The first moment is the 168 hours that followed the announcement of the first lockdown across Canada in March, and subsequently, most parts of the world. We entered into a vortex with no consent or handles at a speed the mind, heart, and body had not practiced or prepared for. Little did we know we were being flung into a process of seeing and letting go of a fractured world; one that had endured and harmed for far too long, even amid its earnest beauty.
Trudeau gave a national address. ‘Canadians, come home,’ he said, implying a sense of responsibility and protection for bodies privileged with this state identity during a global health crisis - even if that may not always be true otherwise. Language took on new meaning; essential created the space for uncontainable gratitude. Would thank you ever feel enough? At the same time, essential created the space to clearly see and metabolize the distortion of class division; how poorly the working class is valued and protected, despite being the bones of economies and cities, and how celebrated billionaires are, despite unregulated extraction and exploitation that destroyed the land and keeps the majority locked into a reality shaped by scarcity and precarity.
A few days into the lockdown was my dad’s birthday. We went to my parent’s house for a ‘porch hang,’ while zooming in my nephews; a type of social interaction that would become the norm. I remember uncontrollably, nervously laughing at the strangeness of it all to assuage my discomfort with rapid change. We interchanged ‘physical’ distancing and ‘social’ distancing to center our rising need for connection; the most basic human truth so often missed in relationships, cites, and workplaces. At times, there was no language to describe the experience. I responded to ‘how are you,’ with contorted face gestures, knowing that new language had yet to be birthed to hold the complexity of the moment.
The physical world dismantled, and we relocated online, almost immediately. There were dance parties, yoga, meditation, concerts, plays, interviews, sermons, and basically any form of expression that could fit into a 9x16 IG Live; a feature barely used previously. We were all online, all the time, and got a glimpse of what a virtual reality may look and feel like one day. With living rooms, kitchen backsplashes, closets, and bedrooms as our backdrop, Babyface struggling with technology, and Michelle Obama dropping in the comments of Club Quarantine on a Saturday night like the rest of us, the glorification of celebrity and the successful felt irrelevant. Our survival response and fear of the unknown transformed into a wonderland of creative adaptation, love, and support, almost overnight. To cope, we created our own joy.
A whole lexicon describing the Zoom experience entered the global consciousness. I spent countless hours walking my parents, who are both senior citizens, through the platform. At one point, my entire family - across four generations and four continents met on Zoom; the first time all 60+ of us had ever all been in the same room. We clapped for my grandmother, now 94, our purposive matriarch, of without whom we would all not be here.
With most small businesses and restaurants being forced to closed, our needs shrinking to minimal, necessary rent strikes, and the introduction of an emergency response program for those laid off or self-employed, the circulation of money felt quiet, and the rules shifted. We witnessed a system typically reticent, slow, or ‘not having the budget’ to fund social nets and protections for low-income communities act quickly when those with money and power were equally at risk. ‘Anything is actually possible,’ I would hear Naomi Klein say on numerous panel discussions over the year. Free education, free TTC, healthcare for all, rent pauses, printing money…
Local organizers grew mutual aid movements (shoutout CareMongering) and pods to support the elderly and immunocompromised with grocery shopping, cooking, and running errands, practicing a future rooted in reciprocal community care. The boundaries between friends, family, neighbors, and community faded. For a moment, it felt like we were in this together with a collective will to use what we had to care for ourselves and each other.
Mental health in the workplace was no longer a PDF handout, 60-minute workshop, or 1-800 helpline. It was present in the room and on the faces of those occupying a Zoom square; an energetic shakiness across the grid. You could not not talk about it and that nudge allowed a gentle care to emerge, one that is so often absent in the workplace. We leaned into presence - facetiming friends and family to check-in, say hi, process, or play a quick game on HouseParty to distract ourselves; forgoing formality, and the barriers of scheduling.
We held so many realities at once between our own and those on the frontlines, those in hospital beds, those in cozy sweats in the comfort of their home, those with canceled shows, gigs, and major events, those losing the home or business they built, those baking bread, those unfairly profiting off of the pandemic, those living in high-density high-risk apartment buildings and cities, those birthing newborns alone, those stacking dead bodies with no morgue to take them too, those rapidly losing a loved one and not being able to say goodbye for the last time, those trapped inside unsafe environments, those working with children hanging off their desks, and on and on. And there was no way to reconcile these realities except to look at them exactly for what they were.
The second moment was after George Floyd was violently suffocated in Minneapolis; following and preceding a string of tragic deaths of Black, Brown, and Indigenous bodies and souls by the hands, weapons, and codification of policing in North America. After months of responsibly adhering to social and physical distancing protocols, holding 6-feet between anyone you came in contact with and crossing the street if you saw an elderly person walking in your direction, the gross injustice of the moment, of the centuries prior, demanded immediate action, overriding one pandemic to fight for another. Millions took the streets with over 4,000 Black Lives Matter protests happening in cities, creating one of the largest social movements in history. Black Lives Matter, a movement that rose from the aftermath of the Ferguson protests in 2014 was now a global battle cry. ‘I can’t breathe’ - the parting words of George Floyd and Eric Garner. ‘I can’t breathe’ - the parting words of many dying alone from COVID-19. ‘I can’t breathe’ - the words screaming louder and louder by a land, people, country, and world suffocating from systemic, ongoing, relentless, senseless oppression.
Unlike 2014, the pandemic had created the conditions to pay attention, and this time, not look away. To listen, learn, and amplify with a commitment to unravel, through the discomfort. To translate empathy into action; a motion so often missed in the throws of feeling sad and bad. To participate, join the front lines, make calls and send emails to local politicians demanding change in police funding in the short-term, and fundamentally rethinking how we care for each other in the long term. ‘This is the first time that people are willing to change their mindset,’ said Nancy Simms, the Director of the Centre for Human Rights, Equity and Diversity at Humber College.
A wave of peer education stormed Instagram - social squares that distilled concepts about racism, police brutality, reform vs. abolition, microaggressions, power, privilege, and the lineage of Anti-Blackness and genocide of Indigenous peoples while fighting counter-narratives seeking to undermine the movement and the ongoing deaths and violence by focusing on ‘looting.’ Black women such as Layla Saad, Rachel Cargle, Ijeoma Ojuo, Angela Davis, Adrienne Marie Brown, wrote, urged, advocated, educated communities on Anti-Racism and Anti-Blackness; their books, lived experiences and decades of work becoming the handbook to guide the great unlearning. Racialized communities, including South Asians, called in each other to examine their unique role in perpetuating and benefiting from Anti-Blackness as model minorities; reckoning with being used as pawns for the colonial, white supremacy project.
Between Black squares, well-crafted company statements, police taking the knee, and abolition on the cover of Vogue magazine, the movement stood to quickly be absorbed and weakened by capitalism. When the system you are resisting sanctions your message without meeting your demands, it is gaslighting.
Leaders began to step down from positions of power, Black women played a pivotal role in getting US President elect, Joe Biden into office, and the first Black/South Asian Vice-President elect, Kamala Harris, was also called into US office. Conversations were happening in whispers all over the country; the shame of willful avoidance and ignorance to look at how Black and Indigenous communities have been systemically oppressed, harmed, and set up to exist in a constant state of fear for their safety to maintain structures of power and control for white and wealthy communities was finally being confronted. ‘We fought to change history, and we won,’ said Alicia Garza in a BBC interview, one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter. ‘Black Lives Matter, after seven years, is now really in the DNA and muscle of this country (USA),’ she added.
The road ahead would be long, accountability wearisome and solidarity a practice, but a step towards healing, justice and liberation was unquestionably made.
The third moment was the complete breakdown and erosion of trust after a brief romance with glimpses of unity. Were we contracting from the collective intimacy?
Political, and now health and science, polarization grew rapidly, across class, age and race. After months of quarantine, fatigued and potentially mentally frail from isolation, technology dependency and precarity, hands dry as aged cheese, blinded by the privilege of not being directly impacted by coronavirus, and potentially negotiating financial loss and freedom, some started to question it all, threatening public well-being.
We disagreed so much. We found the evidence and scientific study to confirm our point of view. Once we had these points of view, we were emboldened by our platforms and content bubbles; the central infrastructure fueling disinformation. We questioned the validity of masks and if the Black Lives Matter movement was a way for the democrats to funnel money. We correlated the coronavirus to the implementation of 5G and made racist accusations against the Chinese for intentionally planting the coronavirus. In some cases, misinformation campaigns were deliberately led by alt-right groups as recruitment tools into white supremacy organizing groups, which made matters further distressing.
Relationships started to fracture under the weight of opinions and perspectives that felt like a direct threat to personal, family and collective wellbeing. Essential workers plead on social platforms to stay home and wear a mask as a form of appreciation and gratitude for their daily sacrifice. We adapted the rules to suit our needs, myself included. Calculating an algorithm between mental and physical well-being and a naivete around percieved risk. The noise was ear-splitting, and yet everyone wanted the same thing: to feel safe and protect the people they loved. However, sometimes that safety and protection came at the cost of another’s.
As someone who can be self-righteous and often has little patience for perspectives without a political analysis, I actively tried to listen more and judge less, with sincere curiosity and the boundary of knowing I did not have to agree. It is never one’s job or responsibility to listen to perspectives that directly threaten or oppress one’s well-being, and in many cases, doing so can be extremely harmful. If you have the priviledge to do so, it can expand your understanding and empathy, and potentially create the space to bridge lines of division. In the case of the pandemic, being able to listen with compassion was my priviledge.
What experience and story had brought them to this perspective? I consistently heard anger, bordering rage, with centralized and dominant systems of power and thought imposed as the only way to be and think, especially as it relates to nutrition, farming practices and ancestral health practices unfairly considered ‘alternative,’ against a capitalism-backed standard. Points of view directly stemming from a complex formula of fears, lived experiences, wounds and needs; inner worlds seeking to be soothed and mirrored by an external reality.
It didn’t help that the leadership in Toronto, Ontario and Canada did not make a concerted effort to listen, acknowledge and address concerns with public health directives; further fueling narratives that validated an abuse of power and disregard for mental health, nutrition and small businesses. What we’re missing is a collective understanding of the best way to enact systems change and negotiate the present material reality and the most vulnerable communities with a future vision. There is not a single strategy, but there are ineffective strategies. If the outrage we experienced during this moment is channeled into a divine rage, the kind of rage that can only arise from protective and righteous love, it can be a precise source and tool for change.
The fourth moment was a mass reconnection with the natural and living world. Parks, forest trails, and campgrounds became our third home, as the pace of modern life slowed to accelerate the spiritual evolution happening across the third dimension. Ciaran and I walked almost every day at 5pm, leaning into a simple ritual like the rest of our neighbourhood. A father and son played guitar on their porch every night, the kids reclaimed the sidewalks with chalk art, and lawns were real estate for messages of love, hope, and the odd community scavenger hunt.
I recall one particularly sunny, clear blue day standing at the top of Riverdale Park, looking upon the sea of picnic blankets, perfectly spaced from one another in the foreground, with a series of outdoor boot camps and runners in the background, all punctuated by dogs and children running amock. ‘This looks like a brochure,’ I said. Over the months at Riverdale, I would play bananagrams, see a wedding under a tree, nap, meet new and old friends, devour fries from the chip shop down the street, watch the sunrise and fall, tape a music video in 20 min and mostly, just be. At Woodbine Beach, a family of foxes that had reemerged during the lockdown were now being protected by a fence and full-time supervisor; one of many animal families that reclaimed their rightful space, despite decades of being stamped out by concrete and hydro lines. I can be averse to going outside in uncomfortable climates, but this year, I leaned in through the resistance, knowing that coming back into embodiment with the land was crucial to my own healing journey. Case in point, I went camping twice this year after 34 years of never camping, and two years of resisting.
The pandemic may very well be the preparation ground for the real crisis we are up against over the next decades and centuries - the ecological crisis. The ecological crisis is a direct result of uncontrolled growth and extraction inherent to capitalism’s ethos, without respect and regard for the regenerative cycles divinely designed into the living world and future generations. In disconnecting from the means and paths of food production, we have also disconnected from the land. We rarely take care of that which we do not believe we are apart of. Reconnection with the earth and the living world is to see it as a soul, hold it sacred and see our own soul as part of it. The world is more than human, and if we want to continue to be part of it, the spiritual response is a crucial part of the ecological response we need.
Each of these four moments was a message from the earth, loud and clear, asking us to reckon, grieve, heal and return from disconnection to reconnection. This I am sure of.
These moments leave me with a single question as we roll from the bed to the couch to the fridge and into 2021 (according to the Gregorian calendar). This question was first posed by interpersonal moral philosopher, Thomas Scanlon, in 1998 and more recently Chidi Anagonye on The Good Place:
What do we owe each other?
What do we owe Black and Indigenous communities and systematically poor folks? What do we owe folks living in neighbourhoods overpoliced, directly targeted, and those currently incarcerated? What do we owe essential workers, elderly and immunocompromised folks? What do we owe generations of activists who have held the line of change and vision, waiting for folks to awaken, while experiencing systemic oppression? What do we owe those who disagree with us and oppose our humanity? What do we owe migrant farmers who are at the heart of food production? What do we owe folks with mental illnesses and disabilities in a world designed for the few? What do we owe the land, our children, our ancestors, our neighbours?
So often, we yoyo between toxic individualism and collective martyrdom as the desirable or undesirable world views shaping the present, rarely focusing on the middle of the two: healthy interdependence. Perhaps it’s not sexy enough (can someone be a interdependentist?) or is too obvious for a sizzling media headline. More likely, interdependence terrifies us; it forces us to be with the immense pain and crippling fear from either being disconnected from the collective or from oneself and recognize that we need each other to survive and thrive here.
We are in a regenerative cycle between our inner and outer worlds, between ourselves and concentric circles of community that start with oneself and end with the planet and between the spiritual, political, and physical. We owe it to ourselves to recognize this complexity, embrace and dance with it as a truth of human life. We owe it to ourselves to reflect and integrate what this moment in history has taught us about what it takes to be human, and how we will give ourselves and other’s the grace to be with the fullness, messiness, and chaos of the experience.
So, what do we owe each other? Scanlon says that ‘doing right by each other means treating them in ways they can not reasonably reject', based on a theory he calls contractualism. To me, it is holding ourselves accountable to acknowledge our own and each other’s flawed, beautiful, contradictory, expansive, ever-changing, and mysterious humanity.
This year we got closer to our shared humanity and we did not, could not look away. May we enter 2021 with the courage to see, reckon and transform all that we know to allow all that we already are.