For the Covid-Conscious, Our Fundamental Weakness Isn’t Empathy. It’s Enabling.
In the children’s book ‘The Giving Tree’ by Shel Silverstein, a tree loves a boy. She gives him shade. She gives him apples. She lets him swing from her branches. Eventually the boy grows up and wants to build a house, so she lets him cut off her branches. Then the boy wants to build a boat and sail away, leaving her behind. So in one final, selfless act, she offers him her entire trunk. He’s all too happy to cut her down with an axe and take all she has left to give. At the end, all that remains of her is a stump. And the boy, now an old man, uses it as a place to sit his tired, dusty ass down.
Since it was written in 1964, this story has been applauded by people around the world as a heartwarming tale of unconditional love.
To me, it’s a Stockholm Syndrome horror story about exploitation, abuse, and the inevitable harm that comes from a lack of boundaries. In the name of love, the tree did nothing but give. The boy did nothing but take from her.
In the end, it killed her.
That never struck me as a happy ending to the story.
It has been said recently that empathy is a fundamental weakness of our civilization.
I disagree.
Empathy, by definition, is nothing more than sensing, understanding, or feeling the emotions of others. There is no action attached to it. I honestly don’t think feelings (or more accurately, a lack thereof) are the problem with our civilization.
I suppose a reasonable assumption follows, that if a person genuinely empathizes with another, they have some sort of obligation to act upon those feelings. The active response to empathy is benevolence, or acts of kindness. I don’t think benevolence is the issue we’re grappling with as a civilization either.
In ‘The Giving Tree,’ the tree is benevolent to a fault. She never stops giving. The boy never stops taking. He gives her nothing in return, which the tree doesn’t seem to mind. She’s just grateful for his company, but it comes at a cost since he only shows up when he needs something from her. With their every interaction, the tree is further diminished, further disabled till there is nothing left of her.
She’s partly responsible. At any point, the tree could have changed her fate. Instead of sacrificing herself in bits and pieces at a time, she could have defended herself. Maybe she could have dropped a branch on the greedy little bastard’s head. Maybe she could have offered his parents a switch to spank him for being such a destructive little asshole. Maybe instead of focusing all of her attention on the boy, she could have shared her benevolence with some other living creature that might have reciprocated her love and care.
Instead, she enabled the boy’s behavior by allowing him to freely take all she had to give. We’ll never know why.
Maybe she was raised by or lived among other trees who normalized dysfunctional relationship dynamics.
Maybe she believed the boy would change someday and would treat her better, show her some loyalty.
Maybe the boy was a narcissist who lacked any semblance of empathy and benevolence himself. Maybe he projected his own callousness onto her. Maybe he led her to believe she was flawed; she was the problem, and the only way she could make it right was to give him her everything without expectation of anything in return.
Collectively, we’re a civilization of demanding little boys, not giving trees.
The Covid-19 pandemic has made this abundantly clear. When we reached the point at which our leaders told us to take personal responsibility for a public health crisis, they were totally giving us the little boy treatment. They told us to unmask and get back to work and school, get back to producing and consuming, get back to making the wealthy wealthier. They promised us we had the tools to live with Covid.
Then one by one, they started taking those tools away. Paid time off from work was one of the first to go. Then free tests and treatments were nixed. Next up was all the meaningful data that people needed to inform their decisions. Then they took away safe healthcare by lifting universal masking in care settings, around the same time that most employers and schools ordered everyone back to in-person settings and removed virtual options. Last but not least, they started implementing mask bans, thereby criminalizing the last tool we have to protect ourselves and our communities.
They have little boy’ed the shit out of us.
In doing so, they’ve groomed most people into becoming little boys themselves. The oppressed have become the oppressors, and they’re out there swinging axes at the Covid-Conscious.
Think about how much you have given.
When loved ones have suffered Covid infections, you’ve dropped everything to schedule their telehealth appointments, pick up their prescriptions, walk their dogs, bring them groceries and portable air purifiers, and help the rest of their households come up with plans for isolating to stay safe. You were only able to do that because you had educated yourself, cultivated the needed resources in advance, and stayed well enough to jump in and help when it was time.
When schools asked for parents to volunteer to drive buses, serve food, and sub for teachers since they didn’t have enough staff members well enough to work, you masked up and stepped in to help. You were able to do that only because you weren’t sick, which is largely because your child that gets treated like shit for masking at school didn’t bring anything home to you.
When waves of illness rolled through workplaces and slowed down operations, you stretched yourself impossibly thin to carry the load and get things done. You were only able to do that because you masked up in the office, worked remotely when you didn’t have to be there, and didn’t show up for the superspreader happy hours and luncheons. While you scrambled to fill in for everyone absent, handle the most pressing priorities, and meet your team’s deadlines, you were still shamed for not being a team player on the days you worked from home and didn’t show up for the corporate social events.
When doctors who wouldn’t mask to protect you from illness ended up getting sick themselves, your appointments got canceled. It didn’t matter how long you waited for those appointments, or how desperate you were for care. They had no backup plan to ensure your needs were met. And although you are still expected to show up for work if you’re sick, your doctor can take all the time off they need. You went without care so your doctor could recover.
When loved ones have asked for assistance with everything from advocating for them during their Covid hospitalizations to planning funerals for the family members they infected, you’ve canceled your own plans and spent your time, money, and emotional reserves helping them navigate through crisis after crisis they could have avoided. And as each one passed, they returned to the comforts of back-to-normal life without regard for what it had cost you to rescue them.
When insurance premiums and healthcare costs climbed by leaps and bounds as a societal consequence of living with Covid, you still practiced prevention to limit the demands on a constrained system. You can get a lower healthcare premium if you don’t smoke. You can get your car insurance rate lowered for not having any tickets or accidents. But there’s no reward for masking and stopping the spread of a virus which is costing the economy billions. You still get to share in the financial burden.
When mask bans started happening, you were expected to passively accept the criminalization of the one tool we have which effectively breaks chains of transmission. Instead, you raised hell and fought back, doing all you could to preserve everyone’s right to wear a mask. In places like Los Angeles where wildfires raged, locals discovered there was value in wearing masks for reasons beyond Covid. And when mask blocs stepped up to educate the public about clean air and distribute N95s and CR box kits, the local government tried to take credit for it on social media rather than giving credit where it was due.
The Covid-Conscious keep giving and giving and giving.
Those who have dropped all precautions and are living back-to-normal style keep taking and taking and taking.
There’s a steep cost for society’s choice to live with Covid. Those who accept repeat infections are paying in large part with their health.
Then they’re sticking the Covid-Conscious with the rest of the tab. They’ll keep on doing it as long as we let them.
In spite of all we do to support them, it will never be enough. Ultimately, they want us to unmask and join them. It would mean a lot to them.
Specifically, it would mean that no matter how shitty things become, they can’t be held personally responsible for any of it. Right or wrong, they were just following the crowd and doing what everyone else was doing. They can enjoy a clear conscience now that there is no exemplar left standing to remind them they had a choice.
And that’s what it boils down to. The sight of a person wearing a mask reminds them they had a choice.
They still do.
‘The Giving Tree’ is a cautionary tale for us. When the little boy last stood before the magnificent tree that had given him so much throughout his life, he had a choice to make too. Chop her down to fulfill his selfish desire to build a boat, essentially ending her existence? Or leave her standing and whole, recognizing she deserved to live, and was completely worthy of protecting and preserving?
Sorry if I spoiled the ending for you in the first paragraph. I’m sure you would have correctly guessed what choice he made, even if I hadn’t.
I’m aware that in the examples I listed above – all drawn from real-life scenarios – we have little control over what is demanded of us.
But in some cases, we do.
You don’t have to keep bailing out your family member who goes on cruises twice a year, then can’t pay their bills because they’re too sick to work for the next few weeks after they get home. If they’ve already put down a deposit on their next vacation, they can cancel it and get at least part of their money back to make ends meet.
You don’t have to keep overextending yourself at work each time others are out sick. Unless you’re an executive leader or you own the company where you work, it’s not your responsibility to keep things afloat.
You don’t have to take injustice lightly. When mask bans are up for vote in your city or state, you have the right to protest them. You have the right to make calls, send emails, show up at your elected officials’ offices and speak your mind. They work for you. Your taxes pay their salaries. Get your money’s worth and demand an audience with them. You certainly don’t have to accept others taking credit for your advocacy, your impact, your victories. Call them out publicly when they do.
Most importantly, you don’t have to unmask. You don’t owe anyone a smile. Not even for a picture. You are not responsible for anyone else’s comfort. In fact, it might be good to remind them that personal responsibility is our current approach to public health. Just as you’re taking personal responsibility for your health, they have the same duty to take personal responsibility for their emotional health. If the sight of your mask causes them such discomfort that they ask you to remove it, they should probably be talking to a therapist about their own insecurities and how they can better manage them in public.
I’m not suggesting we cease all help and support we give to others. I’m simply reminding everyone in our community that we are only human and there are limits to how much we can reasonably do. I believe we should preserve whatever time, energy, money, and other resources we have left for ourselves, for the people who keep us safe, and for situations in which others show consideration for our needs and some willingness to adapt.
Otherwise, we’re just enabling people and institutions to continue living with Covid at our personal expense.
If I could write an alternate ending to ‘The Giving Tree,’ I’d make the tree character re-evaluate her toxic relationship with the little boy and use her pattern recognition skills to realize how grim her future looked. Then she’d develop some boundaries and stop enabling the little boy’s exploitation of her kindness and generosity for his own gain.
She’d become a badass tree like the fighting trees in the ‘Wizard of Oz,’ and when the boy came back with an axe for his final cruel act, she’d pelt him with apples, or pick him up in her vines and bodyslam his ass to the ground before he could start chopping. Standing up to him and holding him accountable for the choices he’d made would in fact be the most loving thing she could do. For both the little boy, and herself.
We can be empathetic and benevolent without enabling. We can say no and set boundaries to protect ourselves.
We can let others learn from the consequences of their decisions, and we can let them struggle when things go to shit. They'd do the same for us. Those who abandoned masking already have.
We can hold others just as personally responsible as they do us.
We can stop being giving trees. Instead, we can preserve the benevolence in our roots for those who need it the most - ourselves.
For now, that might just be as close as we get to a happy ending to our story.
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