On September 6, 1522, the sailing ship Victoria returned to Spain, completing the first circumnavigation of the earth. It took the ship and its crew three years to get around the world. From the time that the World Health Organization announced that a novel coronavirus had been isolated from a patient in China on January 9, 2020 it has taken less than three months for this virus to circle the globe many, many times.
Our transportation networks and technologies have evolved dramatically over recent centuries, but has our approach to compassion kept up? We have always been interconnected, but the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically shows how closely connected we are to each other in a physical way. This is our call to awaken to our shared common humanity and develop truly global compassion.
Our human compassion has deep evolutionary roots that began in early hunter-gatherer communities. Communities who cooperated and supported each other had the most and the healthiest babies. Cooperation and compassion were evolutionary advantages for any given community. But compassion did not extend to outsiders, who posed a threat to the survival of the community.
In his 2014 book, Moving Toward Global Compassion, Dr. Paul Ekman asks what our world would be like if we all felt global compassion, the feeling of compassion for all people, not just those in our family or those who are like us. The reality is that our community is now the entire world, yet we still act as if our community is much narrower in scale. The threats we face – climate change, major economic disruption, nuclear battle – are global in scale. If we are to thrive, we must cooperate with and act compassionately toward our village, which is simply the entire world.
One result of our evolutionary history is that we have deeply ingrained, often unconscious biases against those who are not like us. While these worked as survival mechanisms when we lived in small, very homogeneous communities, they are barriers to creating the type of global compassion needed so desperately today. Any time we have trouble feeling compassion for someone different from us, or begin to judge them, or feel better than, entitled, or separate, it always helps to return to the “Just Like Me” practice.
Failing to recognize our interconnectedness can cause us to believe the illusion that we are highly independent and in control of our environment. Many people, especially those living around New York City, were awakened to the lie of this illusion amid the devastation and disruption of 9/11. However, as 9/11 faded, it was easy to go back to old ways of being. There’s no avoiding this stark reality anymore with the spread of COVID-19 and its profound impacts on everyone and everything.
Leaders in particular are susceptible to this belief in their independence and control. Research shows that recognizing and showing vulnerability makes for more effective leadership, yet it is still hard for leaders to be open and vulnerable. This crisis offers leaders an opportunity to show up honestly and openly, embody trust, and deal directly with what is instead of creating a false reality. Doing so are hallmarks of compassionate leadership. It is times like this when compassionate leadership practices will be of greatest value.
We don’t have to have a traumatic event to strengthen our awareness of human interconnection. As part of our Compassionate Leader Practice Series, we offer a practice called simply, “Interconnectedness.” This practice supports our recognition of the physical and tangible ways we are connected to our fellow human beings all over the world, through the things we eat and consume, one quite literal way that we are all interconnected in everyday life.
There are other ways to see this connection, ways that are less physical and ways that show our interconnectedness across time. The sun that shines on us warms each of us in the same way, no matter who we are. In fact, it has warmed all humans – and all creation – the same way for 4.5 billion years. When we look up at the moon and the stars at night, it is the same moon that humans have been observing for all human history. We have this energetic connection to all inhabitants of earth now and across history and into the future. The air that we breathe and the water that we drink are made of the same air and water molecules that have been breathed and drunk forever. The recirculation and recycling of this material connects us profoundly to other living creatures throughout time and into the future. Any sense that we are not connected is nothing more than an idea of our own creation.
The impacts of the COVID-19 virus reveal for us how truly interconnected we are. Let’s grab hold of this connection and use it for the benefit of all. Can you imagine a world where we honor our common humanity? Where we have universally clean air and clean water? Where everyone has enough to eat? Where quality healthcare is accessible to everyone? The productive resources of the world are adequate to provide for all of that if we are willing to make individual choices based on compassion for all.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MSSL/R.Soria et al, Optical: AURA/Gemini OBs