A prayer.

It’s been over half a year since the bulk of the world began dealing with Corona. With that, neither everyday movements nor international travel has not been the same. Now, we’re midway through summer. School terms have been extended globally, altered drastically from any norm. While some are staggering their re-openings, there is no settle new way of doing old things. Educating youth may never be the same. Students are in a unique position to reform education from the ground up. This is my prayer for youth: Stand courageously as we ride these waves of change.

Travel and tourism. While could spew a bunch of statistics about this fallen industry, any of us can go through the tediousness of searching and scrolling through the numbers. It’s been over six months, so many numbers are rolling in: There are masses of jobs that may never recover. By the time people figure out what to do during this unending period of lockdowns, lock-ins, closings, shut-downs, downscales, too many bellies will have gone unfed, too many months’ rent gone unpaid. A tsunami of bills threatens to drown a plenty. My prayer is that your creativity prevails. There is no apparent swift solution to these current ills, nor can we predict any end with any confidence.  My prayer for you is that you rise like the phoenix.

Essential workers. From corner shop-keepers to grocery workers, from fast-food workers to farmers, from cleaners to manufacturers, from bank workers to customer services worldwide, to all the delivery folk, sanitation folk, safety and security folk, healthcare folk, please know our eternal indebtedness to you. Your lives matter. Each one of you. You are often poorly paid, regularly poorly treated, and certainly too frequently mis-regarded. You supply the gloved hands that handle our goods, provide our services, scrape up the crap we leave on the streets … even get our bodies into beds when we’re no longer able. It is true that many societies have tended to severely undervalue you. My prayer is that essential workers be better respected, compensated and protected.

May our common, global experience of living with Corona provide us all some well-needed respite from the hustle and bustle of everyday-life-as-usual to truly appreciate the many lives that make our own lives possible. There was something eerily usual about the way emergency-care worker Breonna Taylor died in her home at the hands of the police. My prayer is that such knowledge sits less comfortably with us all, and that we seek change, no matter where we are. Witnessing the risks peaceful protestors take to bring about change, and seeing the propaganda that plays out in the news vilifying them along caste lines, my prayer is that empathy prevails.

May we all know better and do better. Do right.