A PLACE IN BETWEEN
Love for my adopted home of Spain, Catalunya, Barcelona.
Yesterday I read a poem by Mark Nepo that had this line “everything is beautiful and I am so sad.” I am struck by how the only people I interact with these days are those at my local food shops. They are working harder than ever and I have never seen them as brighter. I’m truly humbled by their work.
In Spain, we all often pause and we should to the hero line of doctors, nurses, healthcare workers and administrators. Those making deliveries, working to provide the essential needs of people, even through their own discomfort and pain.
Can we extend our view and reach even further?
There are people in Spain taking care and people being cared for.
Those that have lost their jobs, had their salaries cut. Those suffering from the health effects of this virus or another. Those who have experienced a loss close to them or far away.
Those suffering with depression. With addiction. With abuse.
Those that are lonely, becoming lonely and those that will be lonely.
Parents of all kinds, especially single parents. Families that are separated.
Those that depend on daily wages to eat. Those without water to wash their hands. Those encapsulated in unjust systems of incarceration. Those with nowhere to shelter. These are realities we must open to. Those suffering with pain that has everything to do with this virus and nothing to do with it. I am so sad, yet you all are so beautiful. In this country I find myself in, in this place we find ourselves in between awe and grief.
But hardships don’t just meet people in this country, my adopted home, or the one I am from, or the many that my lifeline blood connects me to, the reality is that they are borderless. This, is our binding agent. A virus is not the solution for our human made systems of inequality. The solving power must come directly from us. If we built it, we can change it. I urge us all to think far beyond our reach, our circle, our country, our voice. Our actions, choices, consumption, votes and systems matter because they affect us all.