Seeing the Human Behind the Invisible Walls
How the Pandemic’s Plexiglass Shaped Our Distance—and How Compassion Can Break It
Remember when the world turned into Plexiglass? It seemed like every place we entered defined itself using this clear wall that divided us from each other. Every customer service counter, grocery checkout, and library. Depending on the level of separation, ropes kept us even further back from our fellow humans.
Eventually, slowly, we returned to normal, or at least what normal looks like now.
The pandemic long over, the divisions taken down–at least the tangible ones–and we are left carrying those slates of Plexiglass ready to arm ourselves, now using self-inflicted distance. When was the last time you visited a grocery store only to discover the Plexiglass still in full effect even though it isn’t there?
Humanity has taken a hit. Maybe we always kept ourselves arms-length from everybody else, and the Pandemic made it okay to worsen the problem. Anyway, we don’t treat each other like we should. It’s like we hold up that clear, solid yet flimsy piece of material, to enable ourselves to judge without thought.
Inside every person lies a human. That might sound silly, but think about it. Flesh and bone and life and soul. Compassion demands that we see past a person to see the blood, the pain, the frustration, the struggles. I’m not saying we should overlook mistreatment or that people shouldn’t pay for their crimes. I’m talking about the everyday individual we see at the hospital, the gym, the DMV. Every human came from another, who came from another. Everybody is or was somebody to another person who loves them unconditionally.
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Working with elderly people has taught me great lessons. From surviving the Holocaust to running corporations, all living creatures have a story, have feelings, and have a family. A person of better age, white-haired and slumped, has a grandchild or a child who aches for that aging woman or man. When we start seeing people as somebody’s parent, son, daughter, grandchild, great-grandchild, we discover something much deeper than skin.
We realize a lineage.
Road rage, outbursts, irritations, crooked smiles wrapped inside wrinkles, regrets, acts that seemingly target us specifically, that don’t have anything to do with us. All these internal battles eventually burst into finding room to expand, because the human body can’t hold all the pain.
Next time you are living your life, and you want to get angry at the next person, try to see past the anatomy to see the architecture of that person’s life, the heartbeat from a broken source, and think about how much pain, born from strangers, would ensue should they lose the very person you are judging or dismissing, or not thinking about at all.