Rethinking Immunity..
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
This proverb reverberates through memory. Parents stated it, teachers mentioned it and we have often repeated it to our children and loved ones.
Immunity. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
With the Corona virus ravaging the entire world, our collective survival is at stake. The real question is: If it doesn’t kill us, will it make us stronger? Will we have the sense to realize that we are interconnected and as vulnerable as the weakest link among us? Will we acquire immunity from humanity’s stupidity and understand that our survival depends on one another; on taking care of each other and of the earth we inhabit?
When we close our doors, delineate our borders, shut our hearts against the other, we may feel safe and secure behind the walls we built up around us, but we would be suffering under a massive illusion. Disease knows no boundaries. It does not recognize borders; it does not stop at a passport control checkpoint nor can it be turned back with a rude “no entry” stamp A false sense of immunity from what is happening there is the real danger. This corona plague has been a true equalizer. There is no running or hiding from it. It forces doors open and barges in, uninvited.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
The problem is that when you survive a calamity that has not managed to destroy you, you come out the other end stronger, yes, but also scarred. The immunity you build can create layers of scar tissue that makes it more difficult to feel. You lose some of the vulnerability that makes you more open to others. Psychological immunity to hurt can turn into callousness and lack of empathy. Within the body, the immune system can sometimes turn on the very body it is supposed to protect, attacking, not a marauding stranger, but its own tissue. In its attempt to protect, it destroys and deforms.
If there is a silver lining in the Corona epidemic, it is to help us understand that there is no immunity against others. When we build walls and erect boundaries, we create a bigger danger for ourselves. If there is hunger outside of my comfortable walls, I am in constant danger of attack. If there is ignorance, it will seep through to damage me. If the other is poor and I am rich, I will live my life looking over my shoulder. If I am healthy and the other is sick, I will get infected too. The only way to prevent this is to live in total isolation, which we know is neither possible nor desirable. The self and government inflicted quarantines are affecting the well-being and sanity of the un-sick. Even within our own walls, we are affected by the disease outside. No one is spared. What has not killed us (yet) is making us worried and unhappy.
Will we emerge stronger? It remains to be seen. Will the world finally understand that to help your neighbor is to help yourself. Will we wake up to the reality that we are interdependent and only as strong as the weakest among us? Only then, will we become stronger.
