If You Were A Virus

We live in a world full of powerful things. One of the most powerful things in our collective experience is what you likely hold in your hand, right now.

You have the power to cause epidemics in a vast array of landscapes.

The world showed up in a big way this week. Two people wanted to help a family reunite during this time of dispute at the United States and Mexico border and they asked for a small sum of money to be donated to an organization that could help this family.

The power of Facebook, the power of kindness and the power of our ability to create epidemics led to this request for just $1500 to turn into an outpouring that raised $15 million.

Think of what you could do if you were a virus as strong as that.

If you were a virus you would not care about your microscopic presence because you would be an infection of boundless joy.

If you were a virus, you would crush this mess. You would pay no attention to race, color or creed.

If you were a virus, you would be so unavoidable. A shared experience.

If you were a virus, you would be a carrier of all that is good about Facebook fundraisers or GoFundMe’s.

If you were a virus, you would infect with every mouthful of community spaghetti dinner.

If you were a virus, you would cause feverish waves of crowdsourced support for what is right and what is good.

If you were a virus, you would be a modern day plague of kindness in epic proportions unlike anything we’ve seen.

You would spread far and wide and leave sadness and despair crippled in your wake. You’d bring families together and cause a rash of spontaneous and unhindered goodness.

You would be so contagious, first responders would need special training to handle how quickly a fondness for morality would take over the populations you would infect.

There would be no cure.

You’d travel from home to home, from public space to public space. No one would be spared. You would create symptoms that include deep stirrings of generosity.

Victims of your disease would be compelled to act on their confused and frustrated feelings of discontent.

You would create a reaction in the soul and your infectious nature would swell our eyes open to absorb the pictures, the words, the sounds of unimaginable truths and your nucleic acid molecules and protein coats would move our hands and hearts and minds to contribute, to donate to offer up our precious time.

We would be unable to be still.

We would be compelled to act.

If you were a virus, you would kill this melancholy with kindness and swiftly deliver peace to previously ravaged communities.

If you were a virus, you could cure a lot of ails.

If you were a virus, you would right a lot of wrongs.

You would not be a 24-hour bug. You would keep us up for days, uncomfortable with the state of things. We wouldn’t be able to ignore you.

We should all be so viral.

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