Humanity Is In The Non-Essential

We are in the midst of the largest civil unrest in America in a generation. Though the direct cause is yet another police murder of a black man, much like an airplane crash, the situation spun out of control for a number of combined factors.

As I write this, San Francisco Bay Area is well into week 10 of the shelter in place order. Some parts of the world shut down earlier, some later. In almost all regions, this has meant the same thing: don’t leave your house for anything but needs deemed “essential” such as grocery, healthcare, banks, gas stations, and a few other categories that comprise the basic backbone of our society.

Though in comparison to being displaced by war or major natural disasters, it seems staying home and binging Netflix is easy, it has been tremendously difficult on many people’s psyche as they’ve lost their normal routines and sense of purpose. For black people in America, this crisis has compounded with the normal health crisis state of living black in America. It is no surprise that the pandemic has affected the black and brown communities particularly severely both in mortality and unemployment rates.

Let’s talk about mental health. Entrepreneurs have made unhealthy habits of tying their sense of identity to the companies they build. But the same can be said about people who draw purpose from any number of…