This is The Time For Deep Empathy and Love

The coronavirus is already taking an unthinkable toll in society like we have never seen before.

It isn’t just about the virus infecting and killing people, while spreading around the world at an exponential rate. It isn’t just about the evidence of how utterly and irresponsibly unprepared our government agencies and institutions (national and global) are for something like this, even when we knew that it was going to eventually happen again (SARS, Ebola?). But it is also about the total disruption of life and work at all levels as we know it, the collapse of hundreds of local economies, the demise of thousands of small to medium sized businesses and the suffering of millions of people.

We see the world divided again between nationalists who call for more control on borders, building walls or staying away from people who look like “Chinese from Wuhan”, and the rest of the world who knows that this crisis and its implications won’t be solved in such a way (and I know that the majority of us are in the second group).

The coronavirus is a complex problem. It requires that we come together at a global level to find a solution. And to do that, we must leave aside preconceptions and dogmas, biases and differences, and work together for a solution. This is the time when we prove how true the theory of “we either survive or perish together” is.

The coronavirus is humanity’s wake up call. We will survive. Yes, we will. We are resilient. We have been here before and hopefully we will find the way. “Life always finds a way” like Jurassic Park’s Dr. Malcolm once said.

But I am hoping that we don’t just see the light of another day to continue making the same mistakes that we made the day before. Because if so, the millions of people who will suffer, the thousands of businesses that will shut down and the hundreds of local economies that will collapse, will have suffered, shut down and collapsed in vain. We must finally come to terms with our own fate, own our mistakes, together look forward to the future and today make the right decisions and take the appropriate actions to survive and thrive. In this very difficult hour, let’s not let the opportunity to be better, together slip away from us.

I see this time as an opportunity for us to tear down the mental and geographical walls that keep us apart and start working together to unleash radical innovation through global collaboration. This isn’t the time for the fearmongering, but it is the time for the kinds of actions and togetherness that the world has experienced only a handful of times in the past. This is the time to rebuild the basic fabric of humanity: relationships and collaboration, without preconceptions and pre-assumptions.

Paraphrasing what Simon Sinek said, we don’t measure the performance of a sailor in calm waters, but in the storm. And we are facing a strong storm once again. And this is how we make our bones. In the storm.

Sadly, the ship that has been carrying us around calm and stormy waters is beat up from so much suffering, division and hate around the world. It is now when we show what we are truly capable of when we come together without looking at what separates us, but when we look together in the direction of survival and thrive. We have no option anymore.

Times like this call for the exercise of the deepest human empathy and love, which are key ingredients to unleashing radical innovation through global collaboration. If we can’t understand and feel that regions, countries, cities, institutions, organizations and people will suffer in ways we have never experienced or seen before, the chaos will be deeper than we can even imagine.

We shall survive, only if we do the right things.

Keep our political and business leaders accountable to do the right thing, follow the advice of the experts whom through real facts and science are taking care of us and our future, helping our neighbor who suffers, buying from small to medium sized businesses and local… and, overall, by showing and exercising more love, compassion and empathy toward others, especially the ones who are suffering the most.

Now is the time to prove how good we can be together. Let’s not let this opportunity slip away from us.

Stay strong. Stay safe. 

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About the Enrique Rubio:

Enrique is a speaker, futurist, HR and Tech expert, and founder of the global learning community Hacking HR. Enrique came to the United States from Venezuela as a Fulbright Scholar. Prior to coming to the US, Enrique was the CEO at Management Consultants, a firmed specialized in Human Resources and Corporate Social Responsibility in Venezuela. Before Management Consultants, Enrique worked in the telecommunications sector as a Senior Project Engineer for Telefonica. His last job post was as an advisor of the CHRO at the Inter-American Development Bank. Enrique is also the cofounder of Cotopaxi, an technology-based recruitment platform focused on Latin America and the Caribbean. Enrique is a guest author in several blogs about innovation, management and human resources. He has over twenty years of experience. Enrique holds an Electronic Engineering from Simon Bolivar University in Venezuela and an Executive Master’s in Public Administration from Maxwell School in Syracuse, New York. Enrique also holds a Design Thinking certification from Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, he is certified Scrum Master and PMP.