It’s day three of my self-isolation. I returned to Aotearoa New Zealand on Monday night from a long-planned family wedding in Australia, itself book-ended by apocalyptic circumstance. Fires and floods rolled out the red carpet, while rapid global escalation of Covid-19 brought it to a finale.

I had booked flights back directly into Wellington, our capital city, because I’d intended to return immediately to work on Tuesday morning with the sitting of Parliament. Those intentions had been wiped clear on the weekend, with calls between caucus members and staffers confirming all arrivals back into the country would be required to quarantine themselves for a fortnight. To limit further travel, it transpired I’d be locking myself into a Wellington apartment, the opposite end of the North Island from my home of Auckland.

I can’t remember the last time I cooked a meal, but last night I made five-bean soup, and the night before that, burgers. I burnt my forearm on the oven.

Yesterday, my colleague and friend Jan Logie placed my proxy vote in favour of legal, safe abortions. After decades of advocacy and activism, the law passed. I watched and listened to the debate from tinny laptop speakers.

This is life in a hi-tech snowglobe, the wifi connection your invisible tether to the world outside. Work has continued, but in a radically different way. Speakers’ rulings require that you wear business attire in the chamber. On the couch, tending to emails and phone calls, I’ve opted for track pants.

Everything that was once an urgent priority has evaporated. What matters right now is people’s health, and the certainty they feel with their and their family’s futures.

Four years ago, I fell into politics because I was concerned about just how close so many of us – particularly my mates, in the literal gig economy – are to the poverty line. One accident, one family tragedy, one act of God. And now here we are.

Convenience takes a backseat when certainty is coveted. With our government’s stimulus package announced and a foundation of confidence by securing people’s incomes, our focus can narrow to our collective health and wellbeing.

In a moment where time feels like it’s slowing down, our traditionally unspoken reliance on each other is becoming explicit.

Mates have dropped off supplies without contact. With strict guidance from the Ministry of Health, I’ve avoided early-onset cabin fever with late-night walks along the waterfront absent crowds. FaceTiming friends and family, once wedged between meetings in an attempted token of relationship upkeep, is now a meaningful lifeline.

We abide by public health measures not necessarily for ourselves, but our neighbours; the immuno-compromised, the elderly, those with respiratory ailments. We lean in to the generosity of old and new friends and previously unknown fellow citizens, connected to us by fresh Facebook groups to coordinate community response, who deliver groceries and run small errands.

We, hopefully, come to realise the importance of sharing. Hoarding all of the soap or toilet paper becomes a sad indictment on hollow individualism in the face of universal challenge. Your health, the health of those you love, relies on the health of others.

Resilience is a community, not an individual, trait. It’s the common thread in survival of indigenous cultures and languages despite centuries of violent oppression and repression. It’s the missing link in the regular ranting from the commentariat of “younger people these days” and their propensity to exhibit anxiety, depression and stress manifest of increasingly hostile, disconnected, isolated and precarious lives.

We built this society together: the good, bad and ugly. When we shed care or concern for others, we forget that any individual success any one of us enjoys is built on shared resources. As fundamental as our natural environment and the clean water and air it provides, through to the things we’ve created through collaboration, like our legal system, banking infrastructure, educational institutions, internet of things, roads, rail and so much more.

So far during the pandemic we’ve shown that community, a sharing economy and localised, redistributive support networks work. We’ve shown our collective power to respond in crisis. That power doesn’t disappear when the crisis does.