Take a walk outside today and look in the eyes of anyone you pass. Some people wave. Some look at the ground. Others communicate their fear through wide eyes.

Others seem blissfully unaware of everything.

It’s okay to be feeling some fear. Fear isn’t something to run from, because you probably won’t get far from it. Unless you meet it head on, armed with truth. With faith in yourself and in your beliefs. With respect for the universe itself.

Having accurate information from experienced, educated, recognized medical and scientific professionals is one way of keeping fear from paralyzing us. Get the facts. Do what these people advise.

Let the rest—no matter how loud they bark or misconstrue reality—rave on.

If each of us can come to peace with the mix of feelings we have inside, maybe it will be easier to be a force of calm for others, including that stranger we pass.

Author, writer and Franciscan friar Richard Rohr has been expressing some wonderful healing thoughts these past few days:

“….We know that we are all in this together. It is just as hard for everybody else, and our healing is bound up in each other’s. Almost all people are carrying a great and secret hurt, even when they don’t know it. This realization softens the space around our overly-defended hearts…”

“…..Now is no time for an academic solidarity with the world. Real solidarity needs to be felt and suffered. That’s the real meaning of the word “suffer” – to allow someone else’s pain to influence us in a real way. We need to move beyond our own personal feelings and take in the whole. This, I must say, is one of the gifts of television: we can turn it on and see how people in countries other than our own are hurting. What is going to happen to those living in isolated places or for those who don’t have health care? Imagine the fragility of the most marginalized, of people in prisons, the homeless, or even the people performing necessary services, such as ambulance drivers, nurses, and doctors, risking their lives to keep society together? Our feelings of urgency and devastation are not exaggeration: they are responding to the real human situation. We’re not pushing the panic button; we are the panic button. And we have to allow these feelings, and invite God’s presence to hold and sustain us in a time of collective prayer and lament. 

“I hope this experience will force our attention outwards to the suffering of the most vulnerable. Love always means going beyond yourself to otherness. It takes two.” 

We each have a story to our life that includes pain and fear as well as joy and wonder. We must remember that when we look into the eyes of that man or woman on the street. That’s us we just passed. That’s our brother, wife, grandmother, best friend.

Take a breath. Go within. Connect with the power of Nature in some way. Spring itself is proof life is victorious after decay and desolation. Find a way to smile (they really are showing the National Rock Skipping Championship on TV). Pull out some old photos and go down memory lane.

Maybe it all will result in a kinder, gentler world. Maybe the hate-speak of ignorance will finally gasp its last breath. Maybe life will become even more precious to us all.

These are serious, scary times for sure. But maybe if we give a smile to that worried person in the park, the clouds won’t seem so heavy for just that one person—and maybe they will pass it on. Let’s give it a shot.

“Give a smile, lift a heart.”