Here's What's More Contagious Than COVID-19 - And What You Can Do About It
Today is April 1, 2020, and we're entering the second quarter of the year that will be remembered for COVID-19, #FlattenTheCurve and Social Distancing. We are being taught some fundamental lessons on humanity and on how we want to show up in this world. And amidst the turmoil and the crisis, we are presented with one fundamental question in light of everything else that's going on in the world:
Why did we need a deadly virus to teach us so plainly about our personal responsibility and our immediate impact on others and the world?
It is astonishing how much COVID-19 has the ability to serve as a metaphor, an analogy, to another big problem that humanity is facing, and will continue to face long after the coronavirus crisis. A problem that in my view is more dangerous to our surviving and thriving as a human race than the virus itself. And dealing with the virus might have some lessons to teach us about how to overcome that problem as well.
To get started, let's look at the characteristics of the virus and why it is our most important worry these days: It is invisible to our eyes as it travels, it is dangerous to our health and our lives, highly contagious, spreads human-to-human easily, and travels as fast as we travel. It has fundamentally changed the way we look at one another from every perspective. And we all realize that if we do our part and if we act responsibly, we will be able to mitigate the negative effects of it.
Now, what if I told you that there is a more dangerous disease out there that not only resembles but dwarfs all the above characteristics of COVID-19? A threat that is even less visible? Far more contagious? And infinitely more dangerous? That spreads like wildfire, human-to-human, yes, is transmitted even over long distance, over the phone, through a screen, even through an email? That spreads every second of every day, all around the world, and that we all have likely contracted already, today, as well as yesterday, and then infected others with it - so many times that we don't even realize we're sick because it simply feels like the norm?
This contagious disease that we all carry in us is called self-obsession, and the many symptoms of this disease, including fear, blame and deception, are all around us. It's easy for us to spot the disease in others, but it's hard if not impossible to self-diagnose, which is why we so often carelessly spread it to others. It's a miserable state that we have become so used to that we think it's our normal condition, and we find ourselves being wrapped up in the cycles of our self-focussed worries, caught in patterns that we act out unconsciously, blind to the impact that we have on others, and blind to who we truly are at our core. Seeing the world through a lens of self-concern, we distort everything and everyone around us in the process, and even worse, inviting everyone around us to do the same.
I carry that virus, too. And every time its symptoms show up, it makes my life more miserable. Focused only on my own health and my fear of the disease, I fail to understand the full picture and cease to make smart decisions, and I invite everyone I interact with into the same self-absorbed stance. Obsessed with the impact on my own economic situation, I fall into a feeling of victimhood that lets me blame everybody else: the government for not taking the right measures, my clients for cancelling projects, my friends and family for over-reacting, under-reacting, not-reacting - yes, even the weather for not even letting me find relief from my misery on a bike ride. And by blaming everyone and everything around me, I enable three dangerous facts that are coming back to haunt all of us:
Firstly, I stop seeing reality. I am focused on a very narrow field just around me, the field that immediately impacts me. Both my assessment and my decision-making are flawed and make me a dangerous agent for myself and people around me.
Secondly, I invite everybody else around me to do the very same thing, always to the detriment of my relationship with them, making them a carrier of the same disease. With blaming, I invite blame. With self-obsession, I invite self-obsession. I contribute to isolating all of us into micro-silos that neglect our connectivity at the core.
And thirdly, and most fatally, I give away my agency. My responsibility. My accountability. I give it away by pointing my finger at whatever or whomever I deem responsible for the state I'm in. I retreat into blind and passive reactivity. And dig myself deeper and deeper into my misery - and everyone else with me.
The effects of this disease go far beyond anything that COVID-19 will ever be able to do to us, and unfortunately there will never be a test or a vaccine. Our world is so saturated with it by now that when we meet people that are not infected with it, they stand out to us. They seem free and resilient, able to move through anything with ease and compassion. They seem happy, and they invite us, yes, draw us into their light. And they make us realize that we are sick.
How do we overcome the spread of self-obsession?
We might find a lesson in Social Distancing and Physical Self-Quarantining. What if we were able to practice Resilient Distancing and Emotional Self-Quarantining? Understanding the nature and the spread of the disease, we would always be aware of and cautious around the symptoms that show in infected individuals, including ourselves. If someone in our environment shows these symptoms of self-obsession, we act with great compassion and acknowledge them in their reality, but create space between that trigger and our reaction, keeping our perspective clear from fear and exaggerated self-worry. We act as role models for others in approaching the problem from a perspective on the whole, while being aware of our impact on others, both in our ability to spread the disease and to contain it. And we self-diagnose on a regular basis, so that when we show symptoms ourselves, we self-quarantine from conversations and actions for a while, until we have overcome the outbreak, the symptoms vanish and we are not contagious anymore. At least for a while.
Imagine what would be possible if we all would act in full and constant appreciation of our responsibility and our impact, from a state of deep respect for others and ourselves, and with the solution of our shared problems in mind? What would the world become?
Knowing that courage is as contagious as fear, love as contagious as hate, and truth as contagious as deception, I hope that we will learn the lessons of 2020 to truly take the same responsibility for managing and containing the spread of self-obsession, that we will feel accountable for the impact of our perspective on others, and that the learnings from this crisis might help us to finally find a way to connect and leverage our human potential in a way that will elevate us to a next phase in our development as a human family.
