EDITORIAL: We must seek balance

Published 11:35 am Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Finding balance is challenging in these difficult days.

Shelter in place is considered the best path to curbing the spread of COVID-19. 

Health and government officials say closing businesses, working from home, recessing schools, staying indoors, keeping a safe distance from others is the best way to keep the virus from spreading.

The best way to avoid overwhelming hospitals.

The best way to keep the death toll as low as possible.

Closing down shop is the best way to save lives.

But closing down shop risks the livelihoods of businesses, their owners and employees. Everyone cannot work from home. Every business cannot convert to take-out or drive-through.

A business built over a lifetime, or in some cases, generations of lifetimes, faces the possibility of closing down forever by closing down for a few weeks.

We face a fear of dying.

We face a fear of not being able to make a living.

In that fear, we are seeing the sparks of frustration. 

Owners who have been shut down because their businesses are not deemed essential ask why other businesses are still open; they question why is one type of business open when their type of business is closed. 

People who are sheltering in place look out their windows and wonder why neighbors have more than 10 people at their houses. People keeping their distance in stores are yelling at people who keep wandering too close to other people.

Fear and frustration can lead to anger and negative actions.

Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke his oft-quoted line in his first presidential inaugural address in 1933.

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

In that same address, though he was speaking of nations, Roosevelt said, “I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor — the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others — the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.”

It is advice that can apply to each of us.

We should all do our best to follow the guidelines proscribed by health officials and local government. In doing so, we respect one another and ourselves. And in that spirit of community and individual respect, we can tamp down our frustrations and temper some of our fears.

As for businesses having to close and jobs being threatened, we should pledge ourselves to safety and ingenuity. We must seek new ways to do business, to keep employees paid and to do what we can to support one another from as safe a distance as possible.

What we must not do is give in to fear, frustration, anger and violent reactions.

We must seek balance. We must have faith.