How to See Strangers as Allies, Not Threats

Many of us are entering a new phase of the Covid-19 pandemic. As some restrictions are eased, even as social distancing remains essential for protecting public health, many of us are venturing outside more -- and seeing people in public more than we have in months.

Many of us also live in places where people strongly disagree about whether businesses should open, whether people should travel or not, and whether we need to wear masks all the time, or some of the time, or not at all.

It’s natural, in this fearful and uncertain time, to sometimes view other people as threats. That’s certainly been my experience. On the street, or in the park, or at the grocery store, I’ve sometimes cringed as I keep my social distance from these dangerous disease vectors. People have become obstacles to be avoided.

Such responses may be natural, but they are not inevitable. We do have some say in which “voices in our head” we choose to amplify. So I’ve tried to consciously shift how I relate to, and interact, with people I see in the park and on the street. Here are three ways I’ve tried to do that.

First, I think about what I don’t know. 

Maybe this person knows someone who has died, or who has been gravely ill. Maybe this person had the illness themselves. Maybe they’ve lost their job, or maybe they have to put themselves at risk in order to work. Maybe they’re a first responder, or a volunteer, or a teacher, or a parent. Maybe, like me, they’ve had their entire life turned upside down.

And, of course, I remember that I might unknowingly be a threat to them.

Sometimes I even imagine who this person behind the mask lives with. Maybe they have a parent, or an immune-compromised partner or child, at home. Maybe simply being in the park is terrifying for them. Or maybe, on the other hand, they’re separated from their family members, with a longing that I can scarcely imagine.

Of course, all of these thoughts are just in my imagination. But they help humanize the “other” and remind me how little I actually know about them.

Second, I express a little lovingkindness and solidarity. 

Obviously I can’t do this with every person I see. But if we make eye contact – which no one used to do in pre-pandemic New York – I try to smile under my mask, or keep eye contact for a moment. I may not know anything about you, I’m trying to say, but I know you’re going through this, just like I am. Here we both are, doing our best to hold ourselves together, while we keep ourselves apart.

Having practiced lovingkindness meditation for many years, occasionally I’ll even have one of its traditional phrases in mind. May you be happy. May you be safe. 

I’ve noticed that I don’t have to work very hard to mean these sentiments sincerely. I really do feel care and concern for these strangers behind their masks. This is a hard time. Let’s try to make it a little softer for one another.

And then there are the times when my emotions aren’t so noble. 

Sometimes, when I see people who aren’t wearing masks, or who don’t seem to care about keeping their distance -- you know, the ones who seem not to get it -- I admit that my first response is often one of anger. Often I’m reminded of the divisions in our country that aren’t being healed by this catastrophe – that might even be getting worse.

Having worked with anger and its emotional relatives for many years now, I know better than to try to repress or deny these feelings when they arise. But what I can do is to try, in whatever way, to contribute to more compassion and less suffering. I can’t control how other people act and I can’t make them see things how I see them. But I can remember that ultimately, whatever impulses in their mind are causing them to act the way they do, are in my mind as well. We’re all just human beings, all subject to the same set of drives and desires, albeit each of us in a unique and distinctive way. Even the people who upset me.

And once again, I don’t know anything about this person; their loves, their losses, their fears. 

I don’t know anything at all, really. I don’t know when we’ll be able to hug one another again, I don’t know if I’ll get sick. I don’t know if my daughter will go to preschool or not. I don’t know anything that matters, and neither do you.

In that not-knowing lies our bond. We are actually going through this together as we go through it apart. When I remember that, seeing people in the park offers a moment of solace and solidarity.