An American Renaissance
Grit, it’s what defines this nation and the city that sentinels the west. It’s been a long year, and our country is embroiled in a deadly pandemic with little equivalence for any living soul. But the pandemic didn’t just bring economic turmoil, it removed the gild and uncovered dire systematic problems that wretch our nation.
Mental health is a fatal crisis that has crippled the will of a generation. Over the past decade, the culture of America has shifted significantly due to the rise of increased interconnectivity. However, this interconnectivity is quantitative rather than qualitative, and its immediate juxtaposition made the transition difficult for many. Most millennials grew up in a world where hanging out in person or on the phone was the only plausible way to interact. However, as we aged, the massive increase in mass connectivity bolstered a changing culture that still primarily relied on physical interactions. And for most of the last decade, social media was a tool to complement real life, not the medium that affected it.
Through this increased connectivity, we saw the staggering rise of grotesque and bitter harassment, primarily online. What’s more traverse is how this vitriol spawned. The lack of physical connection removes our empathy for another. It would be preposterous to imagine any person saying what they said online to someone in person.
In real life you have to face the results of your actions, and see the hurt that you caused another. Furthermore, the moment is not ethereal, because if you ran into each other once, you’ll probably run into each other again. Whereas, large online communities provide no accountability for the words of an average person. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can make you give up. This disconnect between real life and digital life is what greatly contributed to the vileness that persists and what eventually led to our current mental health crisis.
Humans aren’t solitary animals no matter how the media portrays us. This false stereotype was propagated during a time when social interaction was unavoidable, and solitary moments were rarified. But in reality, a genuine connection with another is what makes us human. This solitary confinement is especially damaging to those who don’t have a family that binds them. Even if you openly rejected family gatherings, you still relished the fact that someone cared.
And a lot of this loneliness eventually led to anger. Anger that razes the heart and blackens it; looking for release than reason. An anger that used to dissipate on Friday nights at Jones, on the deck after the all-hands over Spirits, or showing up at a friend’s house unannounced, and knowing that the door is open. Ironically, the pandemic only hindered, not limited, these activities.
The pandemic shifted the medium from casual in person conversations to social media outlets spearheaded by blind vitriol. Ironically, everyone on there has the same anger that burns for release, and vitriol is often promoted by others looking for the same. Soon, this created an effervescent cycle which only propagates more hatred.
And here lies the truth of this pandemic; when we surround our days with false connections, we forget that humans, no matter who they are, are still humans. No matter how different one person is from another, it doesn’t change the fact that we are all the same. We all hurt, we all cry, we all suffer, we all pent, we all rage, we all hate, and we all love.
And no matter what mask a person wears, they are still a person underneath. We all want this pandemic to end and we all care deeply about the wellbeing of others. And even if some people don’t know how to show their love openly, it still exists. The same human spirit that’s evident in you is the same in everyone else.
So where does grit enter? Grit comes from your ability to understand the anger that others hold, and realize that it's not anger, it's hurt. Grit comes from the ability to treat others like yourself, even to those who purposely hurt you. Grit is the ability to be a good person despite the circumstances, not because of personal resolve; But because of empathy. Grit is the faith in the good of humanity, rather than its temerity, its impudence, and its asperity. Grit is to suffer from hatred and respond with only kindness. Holding onto some beguilement of the past favors no one, even yourself. What good is hatred spawned from misinformation and depression?
Covid changed the world, and our lives will never be the same. The word Renaissance is defined as a “period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to Modernity”. This is no different than the present, the world is evolving from the Modern Ages to the Digital Ages. And when the shroud that covered our lives lifts next spring, we will live in a country where digital media has entrenched itself as the primary form of communication. In fact, it pretty much already has. Covid was only the embers that befelled the past, but some are indignant to follow the paths of Ahab, or Kuranosuke, or Burr. Poisoning another’s well only leads to your own poison.
When spring blossoms, we have the opportunity to build a new world, a world that we want to be a part of. And it takes a lot of grit to not lash back at someone else’s anger. But more importantly, it takes empathy to see the hurt that casts their vitriol. Unreciprocated kindness is better than fermenting another’s destruction. Even if one act of kindness seems meaningless in a sea of vitriol, drops of water form the vast oceans.
The skies of San Francisco enraged with fire and burnt in an orange that many can only forebold as doom. But these fires are not of anger, but of passion. The orange that covered our vision is but an indictment of the fires that burn inside every individual. The desire for change, manifested from pride and depression and a longing for real connections.
San Francisco has never burned for hate and it never will, period. It burns for resurgence. It burns for the one million men and women who call this peninsula their home. It burns for the perseverance and the grit that is found in every heart. It burns for the desire to see our country changed for the better. It burns for a need to reconnect with our lives. And that fire didn’t stop within us, it extended to the heavens and covered the land in soots of hope.
It’s an omen of the great American Renaissance.
