The Joy of Wearing a Mask???

The joy of wearing a mask? You got to be kidding me! Oftentimes it’s not very joyful. It’s hot, it’s itchy, you leave your mask in the car or at home and the person at the door won’t let you in, or your nose continuously runs like it did for me the other day. So frustrating. I once found myself trying to mop up the leakage with my mask!

But there are some wonderful things about wearing a mask. The first and most important is that it truly limits the spread of Covid 19 (and the flu, which is barreling down the pike towards us at mach speed). Masks are so important! It has been proven that we can literally save tens of thousands of lives by doing this one small thing. Have you ever thought that you, in your daily life, could save multiple lives?

There is another joy that comes from wearing a mask, which may be as essential as saving lives. It comes from recognizing that we are very attuned to reading other people’s faces, but we do this on an unconscious level, so we are usually not aware of it. But we no longer can see a full human face. What is left for us is the other person’s eyes and this may be the most important thing you can see on their face.

Why is that? Looking out of those eyes is a fellow human being and connecting with people through their eyes is very profound. When I see, really see another person, opening to that being who is looking out of those eyes, I realize that no matter if this person is grumpy, or very noisy, or irritatingly distracted, or my best friend, or judgmental, or angry, or emotional, or their skin color is different, or their politics are the opposite of mine or they are a punk rocker with nose rings, lip rings, tongue rings, and belly rings, still, this is a fellow human being.

This human being wants to be happy just like you do. Even if they are acting in ways that drive you crazy, they too don’t want to suffer. They too have family, and heart ache, and times in their lives where they were not sure they could keep going on, and times where they were ecstatically happy only to have the joy leave like clouds leave after a storm. They have also had moments where they lashed out in anger and moments where they have felt hurt and alone just like you have, but at the heart of it all, they too long to be seen and loved.

When we begin to see that we are all in this together, living on a jewel of a planet, breathing the same air, eating from the bounty of the earth, our hearts begin to open and a sense of spontaneous care can arise inside that is as delicious as chocolate. The more we connect with our fellow human beings, acting unskillfully becomes uninteresting. Instead, what truly becomes interesting is connecting. This is why I say the joy of opening human to human, eye to eye, may be as essential as wearing a mask.

When we begin to live from our common humanity, we will finally come together as the whole we really are. It is not an exaggeration to say that every time you connect in this way, you lessen the unskillfulness that human beings do to one another and to our mother, the Earth.

So I invite you to take little peeks in the beginning. It is a very intimate thing to meet somebody eye to eye, heart-to-heart. But as your heart swells in recognition of this fellow traveler on the path of life, it will become easier and easier to see, really see, the brother or the sister who is there before you.  And in that seeing is a moment of healing that our planet is so in need of and so ready for.