Essay 1.1 | Acts of Humanity

Essay 1.1 | Acts of Humanity

“My Humanity Is Bound Up in Yours,
For We Can Only Be Human Together.”

Desmond Tutu

Grand Central is one of those places that seems less like a building than a living organism. On a normal day, it holds a choreography of commuters, tourists, vendors, workers, police officers, families, students, and strangers moving through each other’s lives for a few seconds at a time. It is a transportation hub, of course, but it is also a civic stage. People meet there. Leave from there. Return through there. Rush, wait, watch, and pass one another beneath that great celestial ceiling.

But in a photograph from mid COVID, almost all of that was gone.

The building remained. The light remained. The great hall remained. The famous clock remained. But the people—the hundreds of thousands who normally moved through the terminal—were absent.

One lone figure pushed a broom across the shining floor.

The image was beautiful, but it was also wrong. Not because the architecture had failed. Because the humanity had been removed from it.

That is what the pandemic made visible. We learned, in the harshest possible way, that places designed for gathering are not complete until people return to them. A restaurant is not only tables. A theater is not only seats. A conference center is not only carpet, rigging, screens, and ballrooms. A church is not only walls and stain glass windows. A city is not only infrastructure.

What makes them matter is the human life that moves through them.

We gather because being human is relational. We are shaped by family, friendship, audience, congregation, team, neighborhood, classroom, marketplace, celebration, protest, and mourning. We become more fully ourselves in connection with others.

That is why the best events are not merely logistical accomplishments. They are not just rooms filled, tickets scanned, badges printed, stages lit, and agendas completed.

At their best, events are deliberate acts of bringing people together in ways that help us remember we are not alone.

That is why I call them Acts of Humanity.