Head in the Sand, Rump in the Air

We need to relearn the joy and value of relationships beyond the burrow.

Throughout much of our evolutionary history we were not the biggest SOB on the block.  When tooth and nail ruled the world, we rightly learned to cower in safe shelters.  That instinct, to find safety in the burrow, in the cave, still motivates our lives.

So I worry that at a time when we need more than ever to reach out to each other, to share ideas, to accept the limitations of our judgments, to meet each other in the public square, we have become habituated to isolation, confined to safe spaces for protection against Covid. 

How difficult is it to come back out into the sunshine?  To walk the streets, to gather in public places?     I find that more people now than before, buy coffee at the counter and take it back to home or office.  Fewer than before the pandemic, sit with friends (or strangers) at a corner table.   

We may be social animals, a sociability that finally allowed us to overcome the faster, bigger predators in the neighborhood.  But that skill, to find safety in numbers and in shared action against threat, was a late development and too often became an expression of tribal loyalty—one group of us against another group of us, rather than unity against a common enemy. 

The partisan divisions that we now face are not met, and solved, by withdrawing into safe locations.  The threats to our children’s future are not met when our head is in the sand and only our rump is visible. 

Our safe locations are not truly safe.  The battle for the future will not be won by fortifications on the sidelines of life.