“The coronavirus came like the key to a portal outside the limitations of my previous boundaries and prior level of existence to a whole new world of relationship.”
“Wow, corona!” I didn’t think the virus would reach me! On my way to class an hour ago, I received a message from my student. “My parents returned from Europe yesterday and by law they are now in isolation. So, I don’t think we can do a lesson tomorrow.”
I wasn’t quite sure how to process the situation and started sharing the message with friends to check their reactions. They progressively ran the gamut from: “What is that?” to “Well, and so…” to “Wow, it’s really starting to close in on us,” to “Be careful not to get infected!” One thing was clear in the end: my perception of reality would never be the same. It hit home that the world had changed right under my nose without my noticing, and the coronavirus suddenly snapped the true picture into focus for me. The Kabbalists always taught, “The whole world was created only for me,” (Talmud, Sanhedrin 37–1) but now the words rang true with all their enormous implications.
Bound by the limitations of the five senses and our human emotional characteristics, I had lived in my own little world centered around family, a few close friends and a small community — those who directly affect me and whose lives I impact. Because the products that I need to live comfortably are as accessible as the local shopping center a few blocks from home, I didn’t feel the distance from their source. The outside world was the stuff of the nightly news broadcast or exotic travel photos for a possible family getaway — an intellectualization or fantasy. As long as I received the same products I love, I failed to see how deeply my personal space had been invaded by the world. I didn’t think much about the implications of globalization. I hadn’t noticed how much “local” has gone “global” and how much we all belong to something big — one global system called humanity which acts as one man. “We” is the new “me” and I hardly know myself.
“You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” In other words, we only come to awareness of the world around us through lack. Our distance vision suddenly becomes extremely keen when one of the important products that I consume is missing from the market. Only then do I realize that the political problem in South America has disrupted meat exports, for example, and the consequences end up in my own backyard, and that the “worldwide web” concerns far more than access to information; it’s a web we’re all caught in without any option to opt-out. The boundaries between local and global have vanished, between homeland and foreign lands. The world has become intensely personal.
Like an earthquake, my personal experience with the coronavirus pandemic has shifted my perception of reality in a revelation so big that it is as if I stand simultaneously inside the whole world and face to face as an equal with the world in front of me, both at the same time. The insight of my personal experience revealed to me the literal truth that the general and the particular are one, and all the worlds are included in the man, just as is written in the Book of Zohar. Our inextricable interconnection laid bare by this tiny coronavirus has exposed our utter dependence on one another. However, it also illuminates our golden opportunity to devote ourselves to creating good for each other in a completely new type of relationship.
Without any ambiguity, literally, all the world is mine, “for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey” — just like the groom with cold feet at the wedding who realizes that the deed is done, he’s trapped, and it’s time to make the marriage fly. Perhaps this situation is given to us as an invitation to improve our relationships and actualize a higher level of existence. With the coronavirus on our doorstep, let us each realize with full force that “all the world is created for me,” since the effects of every global occurrence target each of us individually and directly — the coronavirus is proof positive of this. It doesn’t matter if the butterfly flaps its wings in China way outside the range of my physical senses, the repercussions are felt in me.
I have tried to dramatize the change that has occurred in me — from simply living my life within the experience of my own feelings, sensing my surroundings to a very limited extent. The coronavirus came like a key to a portal to take me outside the limitations of my previous boundaries and prior level of existence to a whole new world of relationship. Imagine two irreconcilable enemies, people or countries, now standing on common ground in front of one new common enemy, with a shared goal beyond financial or corporeal concerns, a true human goal for the first time ever. In my personal fantasy as an Israeli reading about the deaths of Iranian army generals, I might ordinarily feel relief if some of them were killed or defeated. But now, in my new state, our common humanity is felt. It is as if, finally now, all the walls or husks around our heart connection are able to fall away and we have a chance to live in empathy, love, and peace. Together, perhaps we have a chance.
If at first my helplessness in the face of the corona crisis made me feel small and unimportant in the giant chaotic world system, like nothing that I could do would matter, a new light dawned out of the darkness of global pandemic. You and I together are the butterfly, meaning that together we can affect the system through coordinated connection. With my new-found global vision and exponentially expanded concern for my entire world, I realized that we can choose to connect and serve as nodes of special importance in the seemingly vast world network. In balanced connection we can become a communication hub that operates for our benefit the sensitive complex system in which we live. I’ll work one and you the other, and with the harmonious fluttering of our butterfly wings, we can provide the updraft to raise the world to a new level of existence where such attention-grabbers as a pandemic coronavirus are no longer required.
What more is required of us? Let’s gather in Dialogue Circles and build the connection during this period of quarantine. Contact us here for details.
