It was a year ago that lockdown began. I started working from home on March 9th of last year. For all that has happened in the last year, it has felt at times that time has been at a stand still. I’ve heard talk of hitting The Pandemic Wall, before which lie our fears and anxieties, and beyond which lies our freedom. So many people I’ve spoken to are the base of the wall now.
It’s hard for everyone. Circumstances vary widely. Some of us have lost employment, some have lost health, and far too many have lost lives. But all of us have lost a very basic need: connection. We are not meant to be isolated from each other. We are not meant to spend our days talking to two dimensional ghosts on flat screen. God and evolution designed us to be with each other.
So what do we do now? We are still months away from seeing each other. We do the only thing we can do: hope. The darkness of winter is always followed by the brightness of spring. The pandemic will be gone someday. The cold distance between us will soon be breached by the warmth of proximity.
I don’t entirely understand what creativity and genius truly are, but in contemplating Picasso, it seems that they are a both a function of freedom and productivity.
I know we’re behind schedule and we are encountering serious logistical problem in rolling out the vaccine, but I’m still ready to make a bold prediction for 2021: when the summer comes, we will no longer have to wear masks! I’ll actually see you smile in three dimensions and without a millisecond delay. Count on it!
The year we’d all rather forget is winding down. There’s only a few hours left and then we will finally be able to close the books on a year that is a good candidate for being one of the worst years of modern human history.
So many crises erupted over the last three hundred and sixty five days it’s hard to remember it all, let alone believe it. But happen they did. And though the year is ending, the trials are not. There are more to come. The planet is still on lockdown, after all.
We will emerge from this, of course. The trauma of 2020 will become a memory and will be replaced by the jubilation of 2021, when we see each other again. When I see you again, it is not the memory of the coldness of your absence that will come to mind, it will be the warmth of your presence that will, once again, take roost in my heart. This will not come as soon as we would like, but much sooner than either of us fears. We will be together again.
In the meantime…
There are many lessons I want to get out of this tragic year but there is one above else that I hope and pray remains permanently ingrained. I am alive because of the competence and benevolence of thousands of people, most of whom I will never meet or have the opportunity to thank. I did not get to this point in my life merely on my own merits and abilities. Many people had to work hard for me live a life of relative comfort and peace. And many of those people are, themselves, deprived of such comfort and peace.
This has always been true, but only lately have I begun to truly understand the reality of this.
I am part of a vast network of kindness, generosity and compassion that has benefitted me greatly. I am by no means the most important part of that network, but I have an important part to play. And that is to contribute to the members of that network and to expand the reach of that network.
The bounties of this life are not evenly distributed. If that wasn’t obvious before, it should be clear now. That is no way for a tribe to survive. Though eight billion and counting we may be, we are nonetheless one tribe. The old boundaries that we once thought marked us as separate and safe have been demolished by something more minuscule than the width of a hair. The fate of the most powerful amongst is tightly bound with the fate of the weakest.
So when I emerge from this lockdown, I hope I remember this above all. When I see you for the first time—in three dimensions and not just in two—I hope I treat you with the compassion and generosity you deserve, for the simple fact that you are a human being and you have a beating heart. I hope I remember that, just like me, you have gifts, you’ve had struggles, you’ve won and you’ve lost. I hope you remember the same about me.
But barring all of that, when we see each other again, free from our prisons, I hope we can sit down, have a drink, laugh and revel in the simple joy of being alive and being with another human being.
Here’s to hoping that this year becomes the worst of our past and the harbinger for the best of our future.
The vaccine has arrived. The first doses have been given in the United States. Although the logistical problems of delivering the vaccine to at least seventy five percent of the American population will be gargantuan—assuming most people will even accept it—it is not unreasonable to believe that our lives will return to normal by the summer.
And let me be clear by what I mean by “normal”: we won’t have to wear masks anymore; we’ll be able to shake hands with someone we just met; we’ll hug friends and family; we’ll actually see friends and family. The size of our own little worlds will once again expand to all points on earth that can be reached by a flight, instead of the short distance marked by the limits of quarantine.
In the meantime, we are in the midst of the second wave of the pandemic, its ravages accelerating even as we approach Christmas and prepare for the darkness of winter. In the spring I had assumed that by December I would be consolidating and practicing the lessons learned from the trauma of the spring while seeing friends and family in person and shaking hands with strangers. It was a wonderful fantasy. Today I am preparing myself for a hard winter. A very hard winter. The trauma has yet to end.
New York has shut down its restaurants again. Other states in the Union that had resisted any kind of limits during the first wave have now imposed restrictions. We just passed 300,000 dead from covid-19 and next 100,000 lost will come faster than the last. The vaccine has arrived but there will not be enough doses to inoculate even the 25 million or so in the high priority categories: healthcare workers and the elderly.
We know now that there is a light at the end of the tunnel but it is still too far away for us to see. So what do we do until then?
The pandemic has taken away a lot from us. And some of us have lost far more than others—far more than any one of us should have lost. But for those of us that have survived, there is one thing that the pandemic has given us that would not have otherwise had: time. We were given time in the same way that prisoners are given time. We didn’t ask for it, but now we have it. What do we do with it?
This pandemic will end. They always do. This one will end much sooner than previous ones have because of the miracles of science. But if all that happens when this global trauma ends is that we return to the exact same world we left behind, we will lose even more. The world we left behind was more selfish and cruel than it should have been. That world did not value all human lives equally.
If my life returns simply to what it once was once I am vaccinated and can transact daily life without fear of infection or infecting anyone, I truly will have lost all that time. I will have been given an extra year of time without anything to show for it.
We all paid so much for the education that was this pandemic, we should come out of with lessons of great value. What should those lessons be?
