One Lesson from 2020: People Need People
DEAR EDITOR,
Kaieteur News – Among the many lessons from 2020 is this one: People need people.
We need each other in ways, big and small, that many took for granted before the coronavirus transformed the basic structure of human life.
We need teachers to teach our children. We need bartenders to pour our drinks. We need stylists to cut our hair. We need our fellow fans – sitting next to us, hot dogs in hand – to help cheer up our team.
People, indeed, need people. Not from afar, but up close. From less than six feet apart.
Before 2020, this elaborate structure of human interdependence was often undervalued. Many of the ways in which we benefited from physical interaction with other people simply blended into the common mechanics of everyday life. Before 2020, human interaction often felt little different from interacting with the modern machines and electronics that surround us.
But humans are not machines. And the deprivation of 2020 – the disappearance of so much human-to-human contact – brings in the fundamental role that other people play in our daily lives.
What does this lesson, this realization of the extent to which people need people, teach us? How might it affect our lives after the virus has subsided?
The recognition that a core need is removed and then brought back should lead to one thing above all: Appreciation for other people.
For all the strife and disharmony among Americans today, the lesson of 2020 is that we need each other – and no matter the political, philosophical or religious differences that we are one interdependent nucleus of human life.
It doesn’t matter if the local teacher is a Republican or a Democrat; what is important is that he can teach our children again soon. It doesn’t matter whether or not the local barbers are religious; what matters is that it can break our hair again soon. And it doesn’t matter whether our favorite baseball player is liberal or conservative; what is important is that we can get high soon after his home runs again.
We need each other. And the continued absence of this core human need teaches us to appreciate the many human hands that quietly shape our daily experience.
So much of the vital human interaction has gone too far. But it will be back again, in a similar form to how it was before. And yet, this lesson of 2020 – that people need people – should compel us, going forward, to no longer assume the myriad ways we support each other every day.
William Cooper