Who Will We Choose to Be?

Though our journey now, of course, is at home. Almost no one is traveling.

The quote above is not to suggest that everything is ok. Everything most certainly is not ok at present, as our government is finally taking a global pandemic seriously as of about three days ago and the financial markets are swinging wildly. My favorite part of this quote are the last two lines. Allow me to explain.

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“This will be good for us in the end”, says my neighbor.

My neighbor is from Italy, and his sister lives in Milan, so lately every time I see him sitting out on his porch and smoking one of his huge fat cigars, I ask after her and see how he’s doing. Italians, he told me today, are bored and scared and remembering their community. How important it is to be together. Remembering that they are all more equal than they’ve been acting.

One of the things I love about talking with someone for whom English is their second language is that they don’t tend to chit chat. They actually say something – it’s a pleasant directness. (And when it comes to Italians, sometimes not even pleasant, just direct. Still love it). Americans, when we are so inclined, can talk for hours and say nothing. My neighbor, even if I talk to him for five minutes, usually says a few very real things. Many of which I disagree with, but he’s a smart and thoughtful and kind man, so even those things make me think, and I appreciate that.

Ok, I say, good how?

“This is the universe reminding us that it can wipe us the fuck out”, he says.  “That we’d better start being nicer to each other than we have been.”

Unpacking that, since that sounds more than a little harsh and I know my neighbor and you don’t and there was also a bit more to the exchange, here’s what I think he’s saying: after the potentially terrible consequences of this virus have subsided, after we’ve reacted and responded and contained and mitigated and cared for the members of our communities who are affected, it’s possible that something good also arises. Not taking away from or denying the awfulness, but existing along side it.

Who will be choose to be, as a country and as a world, when this is over?

As you may remember, I work in finance, so last week was brutal on many levels. Most clients were calm, resilient, and wise – we all went through the financial crisis in 2008 together, so they know not to panic – and as I spoke to each of them, I was reminded of the generational differences in how people handle crises, financial or otherwise.

Anyone who is in their 70s and 80s now grew up with parents that had fresh memories of the Great Depression – that generation is, almost without exception, more frugal, more economically conservative, and calmer in a crisis that anyone else.  They also tend to be a bit more pessimistic and it’s harder to convince them that things are ok even after things are objectively back to being ok.  There’s a scarcity mentality that got hard-wired in that keeps them on guard in a way that I suspect the rest of us can’t really grasp.

I’ll spare you a rundown of generational responses to financial crises, but the stark difference in how older folks handle these things made me think about how we’ll handle this national health crisis.  Who will we be when this is all over?

Who will we choose to be?

Will we continue to isolate? Every person for themselves? Or will this, as my neighbor is convinced, remind us how important community is?

Here’s what I want: when I’m 75 and we have yet another market meltdown or public health crisis, I want my young financial advisor to say “Oh that generation is different. They lived through the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020. They don’t panic. They come together, take care of each other, and are the backbone of the community when things go awry. Thank heaven they’re still around to show us how to handle this.”

I hope we choose to be closer, not further apart.

And here’s what I want everyone to do in the next few days: check in on your neighbors that live alone or are older. Even if they don’t need anything, it will matter that you asked. Even if you don’t know them well. Text if you have their number. Or just leave a note in their mailbox. Everyone has a different level of anxiety operating right now, dependent upon their own internal wiring and life experiences, and while our judgment of their level of worry doesn’t help, our concern for their welfare does.

Let’s come out of this better than we went in.