Standing together, six feet apart

The skateboarder rose up on his arc as a bird aloft to fly.
Then he smoothly dipped back down, continuing to move forward.
The freedom of the solo skateboarder was inspiring and uplifting, especially on a day when most people were practicing voluntary servitude, staying home – or at least away from others – to practice social distancing in the Time of Coronavirus.
It was Sunday, March 22.
From my vantage point, driving along Don Roser Drive, I couldn’t see the concrete drainage culvert. So the skateboarder appeared to rise in slow motion from the earth.
It was a moment of grace and light in a period of worry and darkness.

The day before, on Saturday, March 21, I drove around the square at Mesilla Plaza. The plaza was empty, save for five couples. On the bleachers at the south end of the plaza, two couples sat, at least six feet apart, smiling and enjoying the beautiful day. On the gazebo, there was one couple on each of the stairs opposite each other. I could only see the faces of one couple. They were smiling. Then on the north end of the plaza, a couple sat on a bench, not just smiling, but laughing together.

As this column goes to press, our world is a different place.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced Monday, March 23, tighter restrictions on gatherings (dropping the recommendation from 10 people to five) and closing “non-essential” businesses.
“Basic retail in New Mexico is closed,” Grisham said.
And with it goes a lot of the life and the economic wind from our community.
We may not know for months, years, or even ever, how effective our closures were on stopping the spread of COVID-19.
We already know the immediate economic impact, but it may be a while before we know the long-term impact.
The experiences we’ve had could alter the way we do things in the future.
For example, with so many people working from home, a lot of businesses may realize they can operate without a brick-and-mortar storefront.
That causes me great pause.
We’ve all seen the frustrating and time-consuming fallout of perfectly innocent miscommunications in emails and texts. We’ve also seen the frustrating and time-consuming fallout of intentional negative communications in emails and texts. I THINK YOU KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!!!
I’ve had the good fortune of being a facilitator in the Greater Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce’s Junior Leadership program for several sessions. It’s a program where 30 high school juniors meet once a month for field trips to learn about different aspects of the Las Cruces community.
The students learn a lot, but the adult facilitators also learn a lot from the students.
Students are required to do presentations from chapters of the book “7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.” One chapter talks about the importance of in-person communication. The students tell us as little as 10 percent of communication is conveyed through spoken words.
The vast majority of communication comes through the person’s facial expression, voice tone, hand gestures and other critical non-verbal cues.
If you have an office of 25 people, significant and important communication is lost without face-to-face interaction. Losing that would have a negative effect on team-building and morale.
On the other hand, it has been impressive how much people have learned about the possibilities, as well as the limits, of using technology in different ways.
Early signs indicate nearly everyone realizes this whole situation is affecting everyone else. Banks have announced they will, in some cases, grant extensions on mortgages. That may, in turn, allow some landlords to grant extensions on rental payments.
If we can all operate that way, it could, theoretically, create a domino effect of businesses and individuals giving each other breaks. The net effect could be that our economy just went through a temporary “pause.”
If, however, this thing goes on for several months, that pause will turn into “game over” for many businesses and services.
Beyond the economic considerations are the effects on the health of our people – statewide, nationally, globally. The coronavirus has already exposed worldwide weaknesses in our healthcare systems. We won’t know for some time how many people died with COVID-19, or COVID-19-accentuated problems. We won’t know for some time if an effective antidote essentially solves the issue, or if the virus mutates elusively.
And that’s the hardest part of every aspect of this situation.
There is so much we simply don’t know. So much we can’t know for some time.
It doesn’t help that every person is suddenly an expert on pandemics, and we’re getting bombarded with information, much of it conflicting, on a constant basis. Much of the information is helpful; much is counterproductive.
There’s a chance some of us will lose a loved one in this, which, as always, will bring it home in a powerful way.
It’s a difficult situation no matter how you look at it.
But almost everyone is saying, “We’ll get through this. We’ll get through this together.”
And it’s true. We will get through it together, even if we have to stand six feet away, in groups of five or fewer.
The human spirit can be dampened in many ways, and many of our spirits are troubled. Some of us are sick, and more will get that way.
But do what you will with the human spirit, you cannot extinguish it.
We’ll be back.