The COVID pandemic has taught us that we need the best of each other to survive. As we learned in the past, change is hard but necessary for survival. Remember the resistance to seatbelts? Remember measles, mumps and polio before vaccinations?
Since COVID began, we have seen amazing acts of kindness and generosity that touched our hearts and gave us a glimpse of the society we all yearn for. People drew on the divine spark within to reach out and help their neighbors.
We found our untapped capacity to work together for the common good and to unify around shared values of empathy, compassion, justice, fairness and interdependence. These are the great legacies that we can leave to our children so that they can build a more united, fair, just and caring society in the future.
It is heartbreaking to see some of this legacy squandered in attacks on teachers and administrators who painstakingly care for the health and education of our children. Violent school board meetings with masking protests and misguided curriculum opposition are all too common.
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We need to trust those who are doing their very best to educate and care safely for our children or we will lose the people we critically need. And indeed, we are losing teachers by the thousands. Likewise, we are losing the nurses and caregivers we desperately need. Can we find ways to treat teachers, administrators, nurses and doctors with the respect and dignity they so richly deserve?
If our children see us as the respectful, caring, generous people we are at heart, they will be inspired to become like us. May we continue to draw on the divine within us to teach our children to create the caring communities we can all embrace and celebrate.
Jill Sunday Bartoli
Carlisle
