My Response to the Coronavirus

It was Friday, March 13, and I was getting ready for a business trip to Los Angeles. I was scheduled to fly out Sunday and was looking forward to some great vegan food at a restaurant I found there a couple of weeks before. Then I got an email from my employer cancelling all non-essential travel.

Bummer.

I may have been a bit too confident in my immune system's ability to handle illness. And I definitely underestimated how contagious the coronavirus was. I certainly didn't have the foresight to see where this virus was taking us. I had been feeling cautious about the trip and was planning how to keep myself and surrounding surfaces sanitary to avoid exposure as much as possible. But I wasn't nervous about the trip.

I probably should have been.

Watching the spread of the virus in the United States has been sobering. Because of the virus' incubation period, our current understanding of the spread is, at best, like looking in the rear view mirror, giving us information about the true contagion from a week or two ago. But we're also underestimating the extent of the spread in the past because of the lack of ubiquitous testing today. So it's almost certainly worse than we know. Seeing where things likely were a couple of weeks ago when I would have been in LA makes me grateful that my employer was feeling more cautious about the situation than I was feeling. Friday the 13th turned out to be my lucky day.

Picture of a coronavirus from National Foundation for Infectious Diseases website

Who knows whether the travel would have exposed me to the virus. It certainly would have increased the probability. Instead of traveling, though, I have spent the last two weeks isolated in my home with my family. This is both awesome and frustrating. Cabin fever is tough. I'm finding it harder to exercise, which makes me physically weaker and puts a strain on my mental health. And the isolation takes a toll on me psychologically. It has been a challenge to adapt.

But being forced to share the same space, with little variety in our routine, has led to some awesome times together as a family. Earlier this week, we had a family music night where people played piano, guitar, ukulele, requested and sang songs, and laughed together as we made music. We have had family dinners together every night, talking, joking, annoying one another, and getting to know each other better. We have had family game nights and solved puzzles together. We have had family movie nights, with last night being the culmination of stupidity when we stayed up playing video games and decided to start a movie at 2am. It was so much fun.

I feel like this virus is forcing us to slow down, forcing us to reconnect with loved ones, and giving us space to dig inside ourselves and discover who we are and what we're made of. It is a gift. Packaged in horrific wrapping.

I feel so much sadness for people in Italy and New York who are struggling, suffering, and facing difficult choices of who to treat and who to abandon to their suffering and possible death. I feel such a heavy weight when I contemplate the spread of the virus across the world, and increasingly in the U.S. We may all soon be where New York is now if we're not careful. Or maybe it's too late, and we'll get there no matter what we do. I feel so sad when I think about the economy and its impact on poor people, who were living paycheck to paycheck and have now lost their jobs.

Coronavirus spread from Johns Hopkins interactive map (3/28/20)

I have no solutions to these problems. But in spite of the heaviness and sadness, when I quiet my mind and look inside, I find a place in me that is beyond the chaos. A place of peace. A place of quiet joy and delight in the miraculous complexity of life in this world. I like to visit that place regularly to remind myself that we will be ok. We will struggle. We will suffer. Many have died and many more will die before it's all over. But we will be ok.

Every challenge is an opportunity. A chance to look inside and decide whether we want to grow or shrink as a result of the challenge. A chance to decide what's important and to focus our attention and energy on the things that bring us joy and fulfillment. A chance to move beyond the masks and the fake veneer that sometimes cover the deep authenticity of being - and to decide to live more fully, more authentically, "and not, when [we come] to die, discover that [we have] not lived" (Thoreau).

Most of us will survive this challenge. Most of us will be forever marked by the experiences we're having right now. Most of us will forever remember the coronavirus and how it changed our world. We have an opportunity now and in the coming months to decide what that world will look like. I hope, whatever we choose, that our world may bring a little more light, love, and compassion into our lives and the lives of those we love.

May you all be well. Here's to us.

Etty Hillesum

I recently discovered the life of a Dutch Jewish woman, Etty Hillesum, who was killed at Auschwitz in 1943 at the age of 29. Her life seems to have been one of self-discovery and spiritual awakening at a time when the dark side of human nature seemed as if it might completely blanket the world in its shadow. I'm reading her diary and although I'm only about 1/3 the way through, I've already come across a wealth of spiritual and psychological insights, and I'm excited to read the rest.

Etty Hillesum in 1939

This morning, I read a snippet from her diary that I'd like to share. It's beautiful in its simplicity and humility. I'm in awe of people who, living through such darkness, can shine a light inside themselves and sidestep the urge to hate. The text below came directly from her diary as part of a single paragraph. I have added paragraph breaks to enhance readability, but the text is otherwise unchanged.

"What is it in human beings that makes them want to destroy others?" Jan asked bitterly. 

I said, "Human beings, you say, but remember that you're one yourself." And strangely enough he seemed to acquiesce, grumpy, gruff old Jan. "The rottenness of others is in us, too," I continued to preach at him. "I see no other solution, I really see no other solution than to turn inward and to root out all the rottenness there. I no longer believe that we can change anything in the world until we have first changed ourselves. And that seems to me the only lesson to be learned from this war. That we must look into ourselves and nowhere else." 

And Jan, who so unexpectedly agreed with everything I said, was approachable and interested and no longer proffered any of his hard-boiled social theories. Instead he said, "Yes, it's too easy to turn your hatred loose on the outside, to live for nothing but the moment of revenge. We must try to do without that." 

We stood there in the cold waiting for the tram, Jan with his great purple chilblained hands and his toothache. Our professors are in prison, another of Jan's friends has been killed, and there are so many other sorrows, but all we said to each other was, "It is too easy to feel vindictive." 

That really was the bright spot of today.

From "An Interrupted Life" by Etty Hillesum