Together

 "We said we'd all go down together / Yes we would all go down together." - Lyrics to "Goodnight Saigon" by Billy Joel

"As Theodore Roosevelt put it, 'The fundamental rule in our national life - the rule which underlies all others - is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.'" - Roosevelt is quoted in "Why Did Racial Progress Stall in America?" by Shaylyn Romney Garrett and Robert D. Putnam in the New York Times

Last week was hard. My son and his swim teammates had their championship meet cancelled two days before they were set to race. One of my co-workers called in sick and I'm anxiously waiting for her test results. Ironically, we were in contact on the one day I was on-site in the last four weeks. My sister is in lockdown in Los Angeles County and my son and my niece are waiting to hear from their top colleges. No wonder that my teeth hurt from nighttime clenching or that my chest permanently feels compressed - from anxiety, not coronavirus. 

Which is why I found the op-ed by Garrett and Putnam to be so uplifting. They describe the movement from "I to We to I" over the last 150 years, starting in The Gilded Age of the late 19th century (which looks remarkably similar to our situation at present) and rising toward the "We" movements that equalized the playing field for many in the 1930s, '40s and '50s. Ironically, they note, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s represents the point at which a majority of people had enough of "we" and started the slide back to "I". We seem to be at the height of such egoism now, especially under the non-guidance of our fearful leader, but at least we can hope for the pendulum to swing back to "we" as it has before.

Many American heroes still operate under the system of "we first." Healthcare workers across this country are desperately putting the needs of others before their own, as are first responders and other essential workers. We need to swell their numbers, to put the good of the collective in front of the wealth of the individual, and we need to do it in a hurry. As the virus spreads wildly, I can only hope that one side effect of this pandemic is a movement back to "we," because we all go down - or up - together. Any artificial and hypothetical separation will not withstand the tidal wave of the coming months.