It’s humbling when a professional singer and choral director ends up down for the count, which is exactly what happened when yours truly tested positive for Covid. Thus began a period of self-isolation, the last thing I expected to be doing—or more like not doing—in mid-December. As you can imagine, this is typically the busiest time of year for creatures like me, and perhaps for you, too.

Sandy and I have spent the past eight years building a great Sounds Good Choir team. Those efforts bore remarkable fruit in this situation. I was knocked out by how quickly and cheerfully (and on such short notice) people stepped up to fill in so that the show would go on seamlessly.

First, I asked Amy Wurtz to lead Good Memories rehearsal. She cheerfully said yes—she’s led GM rehearsals before and has been part of that group since its beginning —so that was wonderfully easy! I would have to miss the Arlington Heights concert where I had planned to sing bass under Paul Langford’s direction, as well as narrate the performance. So, my next call was to Bob Horner, our board chair. Bob is an enthusiastic singer in the Oak Park/River Forest choir who also brought a whole crew of his bass buddies to help out with singing in Arlington Heights. Bob was already prepared to give a pitch for new registrations and donations, and he immediately agreed to narrate the whole concert. Paul graciously understood that his bass section would be one singer short.

Whew. Concert number one was now covered.

Moving down the list, I had to get a substitute conductor for our second concert in Hinsdale. This went smoothly, too. Just as he did in May of 2022 when I had my first round of Covid, Daniel Segner, who shares the leadership of the Hinsdale choir with me, agreed right away to conduct the whole Hinsdale concert. This was musically easy for him, since he is the sole director of our Wheaton/Glen Ellyn choir and had conducted the entire concert in Wheaton the week before. The second call was to tenor Jenna Eisenberg, who was already planning to do the bulk of the narration in Hinsdale, just not the pitch. Of course, she agreed to fill in and take the pitch as well.

Daniel texted me with the words, “I’ve totally got your back.” Do you know how good it feels when someone supports you like that? And after Daniel said yes, Linda Crabtree Powell offered to conduct in Hinsdale if we needed that, so we had backup for the backup. What a great team!

Maybe I had cosmically paid it forward. The week before, I had filled in as narrator for the Oak Park/River Forest concert when Carl Grapentine, the wonderful broadcaster from WFMT, had to cancel. Sandy and I had planned to be in the audience in Oak Park anyway, so other than not being able to sit with my sweetie, it worked out just fine. People have told me my whole life that I have a good radio voice; although I’m no Carl Grapentine, it was an honor to fill his shoes for an evening, doing the narration. It was also fun to sit in the back area of the concert in Oak Park, behind the choir, to watch Linda’s animated face as she conducted the whole show, and to join the basses in singing the encore.

There’s more to the story. Outside of the Sounds Good Choir world, I needed additional help that week. I’m the pianist, harmony vocalist, and creative director (the latter being an overly lofty, but very kind title) for the “davening team” of seven who leads our Musical Shabbat services once or twice a month at West Suburban Temple Har Zion in River Forest. My current case of Covid knocked me out of being able to play and sing at the Friday night Kabbalat Shabbat service. Once again, a great group of people came to the rescue. Owen, the bass player, was willing to step in and play keyboard if we needed it, which it turns out we didn’t because Aaron, the guitarist, is an experienced worship leader who has been at the musical helm at several other synagogues and was happy to lead on Friday from his guitar, setting the tempo and getting the groove down for each tune. The rabbi said I was missed, which was sweet. Still, it was the first time in 7 years that this team had done a Shabbat service without me. The show must go on… and it did.

In addition to being grateful for a mild and quick Covid case, I am actually glad that all of this happened. As Sandy will sometimes point out in a loving way, my ego likes sometimes to imagine that I am indispensable. We have a running joke at our house: because Sandy is a clinical psychologist, she gently teases me when the narcissistic part of my personality really wants it to be “all about ME!” when, as she also reminds me, the world is mostly not that interested. My Covid week showed my wishing-to-be-indispensable parts that all sorts of good things (of course) still happen when I am not around. The choirs were prepared. The conductors know their stuff, as do the narrators. All I had to do was just get well, which I did, thanks to Sandy’s extra attention and to the rest that I could get because others stepped up.

Let’s do the math here. Hmmm… I had Carl’s back, and then a week later Bob, Paul, Daniel, Linda, Jenna, Owen, and Aaron all had my back. There’s a virtuous circle here. Great work happened, in the hands of great colleagues. And Amy Wurtz (in Hyde Park and on the Gold Coast) and Hannah Dixon McConnell (in Evanston) have been leading half of the rehearsals and teaching in their own terrific ways for a long time now. Hooray for the team!

So, let’s see… is there a broader lesson in all this? I believe there is!

One of the things that I’ve been discovering over the past 15 years or so, and much more acutely since lockdown, is how much we need one another. I see it every week in our Sounds Good rehearsals and concerts. The choir liaisons at our Sounds Good locations know this well, and they serve their choirs in keeping with this delightful truth. Good Memories lives it every time we gather. I am enough of a work-focused person that I tend to notice things like this first in relation to Sounds Good Choir, but I see evidence of it everywhere I look now, and it’s much broader and deeper than me or Sounds Good or anything having to do with my life; it’s universal to the entire human race, and even to the whole planet.

We need each other. We can’t breathe without the oxygen provided by trees. We can’t eat without the food provided by farmers and those who transport it. We can’t have clean, drinkable, running water without the governments and utilities that help bring it safely to our homes.

Native Americans already understand this, as do all indigenous societies and those that have managed to retain a healthy respect for their traditions and folk wisdom. Certain kinds of religious communities embody this truth, and those in the social service sector live it every day.

The idea that we can be “rugged individualists” is on the way out. It has served a narrow subset of us humans for a while, in certain ways. This concept has inspired a particular brand of entrepreneur and even entire movie genres. Think Horatio Alger or John Wayne.

But it’s not true.

And the very idea that it is somehow desirable or preferable to live “not needing anyone” is getting rather stale for me. I would be lost without Sandy; left to my own devices, I’m kind of a train wreck in the physical world—hats and scarves and water bottles seem to flee from my presence. I would have no livelihood without all of you; I would smile many fewer times a day without Moseley, our dog; and every day I am buoyed up and spurred on by the countless mentors, teachers, sources of inspiration and dispensers of wisdom who have animated my imagination, shown me the glories of music and poetry, and lit fires of love and joy in my heart for these 61 years. Why would I not want to need anyone? In addition to being terribly lonely, it’s just an old, worn-out myth, too exhausting to pursue any more.

As Thich Nhat Hanh, the late Vietnamese Buddhist monk, writes, we have interbeing or, as he also says, we “inter-are.” Nothing exists except in relation to everything else. When I take care of you, I am taking care of me. If you are suffering from poverty, that affects me. The refugees and migrants selling chocolate on countless street corners are part of us now—look away though we might, they are here, and they are creating our world, just as we are creating theirs. As we create a world where they can thrive, we create a world where we, too, can thrive, surely in ways we haven’t even thought of yet.

So please, don’t put pressure on yourself to not need anyone. We might call that a fool’s errand, to be blunt. Trying to not need anyone runs counter to the way it is, and it’s just too much work.

Of course, we need each other.

Choir people understand this perhaps better than many, since without one another there is no choir.

Anyone, even an introvert, can start on this path today. Simply be willing to be soft enough to let someone else into your heart. In the time it takes to take one slow breath, you can shift your focus to begin to see into someone’s heart. If you’re willing to do that, I promise you that you’ll have the possibility of seeing something new in that person. And if you’re willing to slow down enough to be that kind, then someone else will feel comfortable letting you in; and then you’ll have a new friend, or a deeper friendship with someone you already know. And on it goes. It’s like that insurance-company TV ad from a few Super Bowls ago, where everyone was part of a chain of strangers doing random acts of kindness for one another. I was crying at the end of that ad, and laughing at the same time, because I want my life to look like that—a cascade of blessings, all happening with the awareness that nobody is an island. We all need little miraculous reminders like these on a regular basis, for they remind us that we are alive.

As the new year approaches, I invite you to lean backwards into the soft pillow of the truth that we need one another. Allow the huge, gentle, generous arms of our interdependence to enfold you in a giant hug. And then find some way to return the favor, to pass on the beauty of our connectedness. Happy new year, you beloved and astonishingly magnificent treasure of a human being.