Writing About The F*cking Carona Virus

To be human is to be sick. Despite our best efforts, our most incredible drugs, our most brilliant minds, sickness is human.

And so with this crisis, we come face to face with this truth. Not because this is exceptional. Getting sick is incredibly ordinary. But because we’re seeing it all at once.

We are all staring into the face of what it is to be human for once together. We are all seeing together how frail life is. We are all seeing together how hard it is to keep us going.

And it’s SCARY AS F*CK!!!!


I say this not to belittle it, or say don’t worry about it, or stoke fear.

Simply, this is what it is to be human. And it’s extraordinary for us all to see it.

And we are all reacting in our most human ways.

WE PLAN, we try to organize, we ignore the crisis, we downplay it, we up play it, we talk about it, we speculate, we invent CRAZY ideas, we come up with great ideas that nobody listens to. Then we complain that nobody is listening.

What strikes me about the crisis is NOT how extraordinary it is, but how ordinary it is.

What’s extraordinary is that we all see it at once. We all see human nature at once. We all see our own nature at once.

It’s like a billion faces suddenly turned in a single direction.

But we’re only really looking at what has been evident and apparent all along.


LIFE IS PRECIOUS, life is fragile, life can change in an instant. For some of us, we’ll wake up to this, to see these things. For most of us, we’ll run around doing our humanity until we can go back to sleep again.

But for this moment, WE’RE ALL A LITTLE MORE AWAKE. I’m present to some people I can’t call, I can’t talk to. And I wonder if they’re ok. I think about my parents, in their 70’s, have I spent enough time with them?

I think about myself. What should I choose to do? If I die in the next month, will I be happy with how I lived my life?

I’m awake to life, and I’m scared. For a moment, the whole world is awake and scared.

We all seem to see everyone scared. But the thing I want you to all remember is that for a moment – EVERYONE IS SCARED BECAUSE THEY ARE AWAKE. It’s a rare thing. To be awake. Even 10% more.

It’s a miracle. It won’t last. And it’s breathtaking.

So please cherish this moment of awake. This reminder that death is sitting there. That sickness is of our nature.

Cherish those you love. Use it as an excuse to call old friends. To check on people. To remind your heart of how short this all is.

And then please for the love of God WASH YOUR FUCKING HANDS!!!

Love, Toku