Let me begin this way—so that no one accuses me in the comment section or elsewhere of being heartless, callous, or cruel. As President Biden reminded us late last week, the sheer death toll of the COVID-19 virus has been nothing short of tragic and sad. Since the beginning of last year, 2020, 546,919 (I checked) Americans have died. 30,073,162 have contracted the disease, each with varying degrees of side effects and severity of illness, on a vast spectrum stretching from totally asymptomatic all the way to a dire need for hospitalization and life-sustaining treatment on a ventilator. These facts are so commonly known by now that there’s almost no need to recount them, but I do so to make a salient point.
We have struggled as a society in a multitude of ways from the pandemic. Because of the way it has radically disrupted our lives, it will likely be years before we can fairly and accurately unpack the changes it has made. Millions have lost their jobs. Many others immediately grow anxious to open every new e-mail sent to them by their employer, hoping that said correspondence will not tell them that they will be the very next in line to be laid off. Families have not gathered together for whole months at a time, if not over a year. I could continue this listicle of COVID related problems to fill out a whole post, but I think you understand me. Moving on, let’s entertain a semi-radical notion, which to already-suffering people might come across, if worded inelegantly, very wrongly and tone deaf.
Despite our trauma, we are also exceedingly lucky. The pandemic is nowhere near over, but the light at the end of the tunnel is now, finally, blessedly visible. Our populace is being vaccinated at a reasonably effective pace. This is a highly political opinion, of course, but one hears less and less with every passing day about vaccine shortages and mismanaged roll outs. The system may be working. As President Biden noted, it is entirely feasible that every American will be eligible to have shot(s) in arms by May 1. It makes sense now to be able to safely hold small gatherings by Independence Day. An impatient American public is eager to get things back to normal as quickly as possible. Though attitudes have changed dramatically—back and forth—as this disease has progressed, often in contradictory fashion, there seem to be fewer doom-sayers currently active who insist that the world will forever be blighted for the remainder of recorded time.
Our parents and grandparents were not nearly as lucky. Not only did they have to struggle with the debilitating and disheartening period known as the Great Depression, they followed up that exceedingly rough period of economic devastation with immediate entry into World War II. Both lasted for years at a time. We would today endure these protracted periods of great discomfort if we had to—that’s just the indomitable nature of the human condition—to persist in life against great adversity. But the emphasis I’m seeking to make here is that we haven’t had to sacrifice to any degree resembling their own. I live in the Southern United States, and my ancestors dealt with the ruinous impact of four full years of terrible Civil War, in addition to economic devastation that persisted not simply for years, but for generations.
I fully recognize that we’re a long way away with this pandemic to declaring “Mission Accomplished.” New viral strains could spring up in a big way. There is still ample room for error and increased rates of infection. But we are so accustomed to having things exactly the way we want them that I think sometimes we want to wish bad times away, as though by force of will alone we can make everything exactly “the way it’s supposed to be.” This train of thought goes well beyond a patent refusal to wear a mask in public or socially distance.
It also speaks to the people current griping about the recent rise in gasoline prices, who have long been driving incredibly fuel inefficient cars and trucks for years. We’re all going to have to, whether we want to or not, downsize our vehicles, switch to cleaner, greener sources of energy, and increase public transportation options. We are going to have to transition away from our love affair with the automobile.
I recognize I’m probably preaching to the converted here, at least on those issues, but we really don’t have much choice in the matter anymore. Many of us are entitled to the maximum in this society. We’ve had it our way for so long that we see these great privileges as a kind of birthright. 2020 and beyond could serve as a great lesson in hubris to the American mindset. Down here in red state world, people have routinely risked (and continue to risk) super spreader catastrophes by continuing to eat inside at restaurants. Indeed, they’ve been active in public for a very long time, only sheltering in place in the earliest days, when doing so was mandatory. They insist on having their hair done by professionals or frequenting gyms. To them, it’s as if they think the rules don’t apply.
We have suffered, but we have not been put through the wringer the way our parents and grandparents were. Imagine if we were currently engaged in a conventional shooting war, where the outcome was always in doubt. Imagine the dread fear of losing a loved one in armed combat. Imagine experiencing the vast polar swings of relief and joy at each victory versus the fear and grief at each defeat. Imagine finding a record of the death of a close family member, with the rest of the whole town gathered around the post office, desperate for war news. This was the case during the Civil War. Imagine if you discovered, closely surveying the rolls of the deceased, that a loved one had perished in battle, while experiencing the double indignity of viewing their very name mistakenly misspelled by a careless military cipher.
My grandmother, my mother’s mother, talked about crying up a storm all day long on D-Day. Though she, of course, was not informed of the exact or time of the invasion, she knew from extensive written correspondence that one of her four brothers (all of whom fought in World War II to some degree or another) would be dispatched to come ashore on that fateful day. She was an inconsolable mess that entire day, the minute the news reports began to reach American shores by way of radio. Imagine her relief to discover that all he survived, but also picture, if you can, the despair and turmoil felt by those who didn’t receive similarly comforting news. And this kind of emotional torment and hell was her lived experience and the lived experience of millions of other people for four full years. I haven’t even mentioned Western Europe, where war went on far longer, and casualties on both sides were much higher.
We may have had slogged through a lost year or two due to COVID, but I think we need to keep matters in perspective. If you’ve lost a loved one to the virus, I empathize with your anguish. If you’ve been worried for the health of an older relative or close family member, I don’t discount your genuine concern for him or her. Now that we have been able to finally start breathing again, so to speak, I urge us to recognize how very fortunate we are to live in a time with advanced modern medicine and advanced technology. Without both, death tolls and infection numbers would have been far greater; without widespread broadband internet, I’m not sure how we would have been able to conduct business and other important means of group communication.
I wonder how we will view this surreal time in the future. What will we tell those not yet born about all the reasons why so many people in films and photographs in this general time period wore masks? Will we talk about the time we had to rely on food stamps, maybe for the first time ever, to fill out a food budget? Will we speak about the abject helplessness we felt for a time, before effective strategies to protect us all were put into place? What other metrics and ephemera will serve as reminders? I worry that in our desire to put everything behind us, we will waste opportunities to teach and instruct each other, both now and then.
In his poem entitled “Portrait of a Lady,” T.S. Eliot uses a relationship between a male and female couple as an example to illustrate several of his own points. I have deliberately bolded the text of one especially pertinent stanza. It may stand in for our relationships with ourselves as an entire nation. To Eliot, this is a poem about an emotionally stunted young man in the middle of a dubious relationship with a much older woman who desires him far more than he does her. But put in a different context, it describes our relationships with each other as Americans. The bolded passage shows us the reason for our lack of understanding and friendship with each other—our beginnings do not know our ends. They do not now and, even more, they may never have. Consider the great debate we are having about our history (and histories, plural) as well as what we currently deem acceptable and unacceptable.
The October night comes down; returning as before
Except for a slight sensation of being ill at ease
I mount the stairs and turn the handle of the door
And feel as if I had mounted on my hands and knees.
"And so you are going abroad; and when do you return?
But that's a useless question.
You hardly know when you are coming back,
You will find so much to learn."
My smile falls heavily among the bric-à-brac.
"Perhaps you can write to me."
My self-possession flares up for a second;
This is as I had reckoned.
"I have been wondering frequently of late
(But our beginnings never know our ends!)
Why we have not developed into friends."