Hi, Christa. This is Anna Bondak, calling from Los Angeles, California.

I've been sitting at home with my family doing not much of anything for the last six days now on self-quarantine.

And it's got me thinking about something that has plagued me really most of my life.

I'm the daughter of first-generation immigrants from the Philippines.

And they raised me to believe that only through hard work and application of myself and my opportunities that I would be worth something and have a place in society.

So I've been sitting here, frustrated and stressed. I'm not a health care worker.

I can't be my normal teacher self-interact with kids and help that way.

And so my identity as a helper has been put on hold.

And I've been thinking a lot about what it means to just be and how that intersects with the notion, which I think is quite American, to be worth something.

How does self-worth interact with just being?

So my question is, if I believe that we are all inherently worthy just by being human, how can I feel that way when I feel I'm doing quote unquote nothing?

Oh, those are such good questions.

Oh, I just completely agree that this is an American thing. I also think it's a it's a modernity thing and it's it's a lie we've been told.

But I also think that part of part of what what is wrong about it is also the idea is not just the idea that it's only through hard work or through work or action that we become worthy and valuable.

But that just being I mean that just in front of being that being is something passive and empty.

Because being is also about our presence, our presence in the world, our presence to others, our presence towards our families, which is moment to moment really powerful.

And I do think that one of the unexpected, maybe it shouldn't have been unexpected if we'd all listen to Rebecca Solmet three years ago.

But what of the unexpected experiences of this crisis has been the value of our presence in each other's lives, the value of care and caregiving.

And yes, that is about healthcare workers, but it's also about parents and it's about neighbors and it's about, you know, I see people in every profession, you know, imagining how they can be of service with their presence with what they already know with where they already are.

And I think the other another lesson that's that's so much on my mind, just in my experience of quarantine and yeah, just my experience of being alive right now is how important it becomes to care for ourselves.

That aspect of being and that is even more countercultural, that has even more been driven out of those of us, you know, I don't come from an immigrant family, but my family also had circumstances that conspired to make me feel that my value was absolutely dependent on my contribution, my performance, my action.

Yeah, we, this crisis of the moment, I believe, is or certainly can be the beginning of different ways of living, of different ways of structuring things, you know, we were just speaking here together in the office about how these really ordinary

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