A month ago I attended four large events: a wedding reception, a funeral, and two shiva minyanim. Apparently, I got Covid at one of them. It took more than 3½ years for me to contract the virus which, given my success at avoiding it, came as a shock when I tested positive.

I have been exceptionally careful since the pandemic began. I isolated myself much of that period and I’ve worn a mask when I’ve been around people in closed spaces, most of the time – obviously not always or I wouldn’t have contracted Covid. It’s still very much out there, and for those who think we’re past the epidemic and can return to life as we once knew it – think again.

As I tested positive for 14 days (I’m negative now and recovering), I’ve thought anew about the millions of Americans and people worldwide that suffered, perished, and mourned their loved ones as a consequence of this horrendous plague. I am beyond grateful for the vaccine and boosters as they protected me, most likely, from a very serious illness. Though I was sick enough, many have had it far worse than me. There was a dimension to having the virus that I didn’t fully comprehend or appreciate until it hit me; namely, I thought about what it is that characterizes us as human beings.

Albert Camus described the emotional, psychological, and physical consequences of the plague in his prescient novel – The Plague – first published in 1947 two years after WWII and in the wake of the Shoah, suggesting that Camus was really writing about the worldwide devastation brought about by the evils of Nazi Germany and its allies:

“The plague had swallowed up everything and everyone. No longer were there individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and the emotions shared by all. Strongest of these emotions was the sense of exile and of deprivation…. The plague forced everyone to isolate as individuals from their loved ones…each…content to live only for the day, alone under the vast indifference of the sky.”

Though aloneness seems to be an existential truth about the human condition, it is really empathy that defines the human being, that ability to put ourselves in the shoes of the other, to allow our imagination to bridge the chasm of separation, alienation, and fragmentation, to hone our capacity to actively listen to the stories, pains, sufferings, and joys of others without self-referencing our own stories, pains, sufferings, and joys, to sympathize with the truths of others without comparing, contrasting, and judging our truths with theirs – that is what existentially makes us human beings. It’s all about empathy.