There is a Facebook initiative going on called The View from my Window. People from all over the world, in quarantine, are taking pictures out their windows and sharing their views.

I find it mesmerizing. I can’t stop scrolling. People in Iceland, South Africa, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Kenya, Hawaii, Norway, every thinkable country, are posting pictures. There is ice and snow, there is lush tropical vegetation, there is desert, there are oceans, lakes and lagoons, there are city streets, there are brick walls in courtyards in European cities. All at the same time. All people at home. Everyone around the world is sharing.

COVID-19 is a global disaster of almost unprecedented proportions. But it is also a unifying experience. I have always been a global citizen. I have traveled. I speak multiple languages. But I have never before felt the amount of global unity that I feel right now.

In the morning, I spend ten or twenty minutes scrolling through The View from my Window and see snippets of the lives of people I will never know, people, who are nevertheless just like me, people who I feel are my friends.

And I feel united. I rise beyond national interests. I leave the closed world of my home and I look out and enjoy The View from my Window.