Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I thought about Humpty Dumpty, which is by no means a shocking admission. These days, all bets are off on whatever may happen to cross my mind. I was having a cheery moment, thinking about the world falling apart. I flashed on the image of HD completely shattered, after having tumbled off a wall of indeterminate height. I sat with this image and the idea of it for a while. As you may know, it is an incredibly complex nursery rhyme, with four, very short lines. While I am serious about the number of lines, the simplicity reminds me of Chance the gardener in Being There.
I decided to construct my own contemporary meaning to the words of this rhyme. Maybe it’s too many hours of self-isolation, but the saga of Humpty seemed to perfectly fit the time. First, let’s start with our protagonist, the animated ellipsoid sitting on the wall. In spite of efforts to humanize our hero, he clearly is meant to look like an egg. Aside from making omelet’s possible, it symbolizes embryonic life, the beginning of it all. Now, if it we take it just one small step further, maybe more of a leap, it’s the home to all life, our planet.
Many of you have nothing better to do at the moment, so work with me here. Sitting on the wall of infinite time has weathered this orb from all we’ve ever known. Had we left it alone, all would have been fine, barring an Ice Age or two and some meteor run ins. If you look really close, there are thousands of little fissures scarring its shell. Our endless conflicts have banged it around terribly. As strong as it is, it is also incredibly sensitive. Hiroshima shook it uncontrollably, while the murder of Emmett Till left a searing, visible scar.
There is so much history to look back upon, so many transgressors and transgressions. Why does this feel like “a great fall”? Why is this a Humpty Dumpty moment? Progress has been both our benefactor and our oppressor. It has taken us thousands of years to get better at everything and much of it has been destructive. The short term benefits have often blinded us to the inevitable consequences, as if status quo is a sin.
This is such an extraordinary time in our story and it may actually be without precedent. There are over seven billion of us glued to this shell. We have developed unimaginable technologies, capable of a kind of intellectual magic that wasn’t in the minds of people like the Wright Brothers, who pushed their plane into the air in Kitty Hawk. On the shadow side, we have evolved a kind of cruelty toward each other that is the stuff of nightmares.
This twenty-first century plague has shown us at our worst and best. I don’t have a vocabulary to describe the immoral and inhumane behavior of our President and his minions, regardless of party. The divide between powerful and the people is so ugly, it is hard to look at. This sinister disconnect has crossed borders, a lethal export, engulfing all in its cross-global path.
What has precipitated this fall from the wall? The focus has been on science, trying to understand the virus that has caused all this, as if there was a single push. I think, over time, Humpty’s immune system has been compromised, requiring a look inside. The sun like circular yoke, the life force, floats suspended in a universe of cloudy viscosity. It is delicately balanced inside the shell. It is easy to look for surface answers, devoid of the subtleties that make our lives and all life, so fascinating. There has been a terrible contraction of the spirit, manifested by an epidemic of meanness that often appears tragically out of control. Nobody wants to talk about this virus being symptomatic of a poisoning from the inside out.
What happens when Humpty Dumpty finally hits the ground, shattered and confused? He will come back together again, because he will, because he always does. This is not his first fall, not by any means. For well over four billion years, he has come back each time. This time, we can’t leave it to “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men”, who have managed to screw it every time they tried for the last several thousand years. They have always cared only about themselves.
My prayer is that all the rest of us give it a try. We are the cure for what ails us. This illness has connected all of us in a way we never could have imagined. All the king’s men have focused on our separateness, a hollow illusion, now tragically obvious. This virus does not discriminate. In its eyes, we are all equal. We are all in a war for our survival, making our supposed differences seem so petty. I pray we can heal ourselves and this magnificent egg that holds all life within and without.