This virus is an opportunity — let’s not waste it
Suddenly news is everywhere. I found myself reading the paper whilst also watching the news on television yesterday and thought, “This feels familiar”. The world is changing rapidly; the situation is dynamic and moving, our reality is shifting, our ideas about what we will be doing next week, next month, are having to be adjusted. Things today are not what they were last week, or last month.
This sense of reality running away from us is something we Europeans, used to peacetime, associate with other countries — war zones, places elsewhere with different histories, weak governments, poor infrastructure. We don’t expect it in the West and it comes as a shock.
Except that, for those of us living in New York in the period following the World Trade Centre attacks, it is somehow strangely familiar: panic buying, people wearing masks (back then it was gas masks), surreal TV footage, horrific scenarios playing out in everyone’s minds of what could happen, what had happened, what would happen next…
In the aftermath of 911 there was something else: a newfound understanding of what truly matters.
Yes, lives were lost and the devastation to those immediately affected by this was incalcuable. But for those of us who were just in the city, living alongside the bereaved, the traumatised, there came another understanding.
After the immediate shockwave had hit, a wave of love and compassion washed over the city.
There was a collective sense of compassion and appreciation. All the usual grievances were recognised as trivial, pointless. I remember an African American taxi driver explain to me as he collected me from a shut down, tank guarded airport, how he understood now that America was one nation, regardless of colour, that we were all one and needed to stand together, to leave the past behind. We were one humanity, one people.
There was a renewed understanding of the important role played by the emergency services. I cried every time a fire truck went past because every time a fire truck went past, everyone stopped what they were doing and clapped. It was emotional. It was beautiful.These people had risked their lives, many had died. They were real heroes and we loved them indiscriminately.
These instances of strangers expressing to eachother solidarity and resilience were so numerous they became the new normal. Before we had lived separate lives, now we all talked. We grabbed any opportunity to share our thoughts, encourage eachother to be hopeful. We shared our grief. Life became much slower and there was not a day where a new story of survival, of sadness or hope was not shared. Often whole days were given over to these stories, even as we went about shopping, visiting, working, we were sharing, supporting, giving friendship and love.
It was a collective satori. We understood suddenly the true value of real things in life.
So many, myself included, made permanently life changing decisions towards the positive — a move home, a change of career, a decision to follow one’s heart. What was untrue became patently so. What was real and heartfelt was injected with new passion and vigor. Yes, we said, we could be brave and live more authentically. It was the end of pretense and self deception for many for a while. For some it was the end of pretence for the rest of their lives.
What had been learnt could not be unlearned. It was an awakening and held within it the very real sense that life was sacred and worth living.
I was at the very beginning of a new relationship. Suddenly we were thrust together in dramatically altered circumstances. We held fast. We have never since let go. A couple of days after the attacks we were walking home from a restaurant when the heavens opened. We wanted to support local businesses as many were risked with financial ruin. We got drenched and experienced perhaps for the first time since childhood, the the joy of of natural forces, a childlike pleasure in water.
But this story — this amazing story of resilience and solidarity is not the story that is told about those times.
The government had an agenda. The media began to ramp up calls for revenge. They did not reflect the love and compassion I witnessed; daily gatherings for peace — a spontaneous and beautiful demonstration of the citizens’ longing for a better world that had sprung up in Union Square — with candles and flowers and messages written in chalk — were unceromoniously cleared into black bin bags the day before the announcement of the invasion of Afganistan.
Security was ramped up and, lets face it, it has never been the same since. We saw Osama Bin Laden announcing “The Wind Has Changed Direction” and understood that, indeed, life had changed and some were using this to pursue their greedy aims. Thus began a series of ill-advised wars and conflicts that has never ended: Iraq, ISIS, Libya, Syria, Iran…the list goes on.
As Walter Benjamin famously wrote, the human experience of Modernity is via a series of ‘shocks’. We receive a bolt and experience it like an electric shock.
The stability and security we thought we were assured of is shattered and we face a new reality. But it is up to us to decide how to face it.
One observation I made of the post-911 collective trauma was that many did not manage well the mental challenge of incorporating this new reality into their world-view. The end-of-world scenario played out as a cascade of fear and anxiety which, once initiated, would not stop. New York at the time was not only a place of love and peace. It was also a place of risky sex and excessive drinking. Years later the effects of this were still apparent — in mental health issues, drink problems and divorce.
Conspiracy theorists, once the preserve of student union bars and pub bores, had a field-day preying on those who were struggling to comprehend the new reality. The simple and obvious explanation that the attacks were a combination of security services dropping the ball combined with and a well-funded foreign agency wishing ill upon the West were unsatisfactory to many who needed more.
So more was provided in the form of a wide range of theories and ideas. These were not helpful to the bereaved, to traumatised people who lived through that terrible day, to those who lived with the real aftermath. This was, after all a REAL event that happened to REAL people. But returning to England I found to my dismay, that 911 had already been transformed into a cartoon-like fiction where all sorts of game plans were being played out.
My observation was that this weaving of new realities was a way for people to distance themselves from the real emotion impact of the human tragedy they had witnessed. In these scenarios the vicitms were usually deserving ‘Capitalists’.
Having stood, as many New Yorkers did, at the police barracade downtown with the wives, fiances, parents and cousins of those that were, at that time still considered ‘missing’ I found this fantasy-game playing with the real situation deeply offensive. It was de-humanising and cowardly. More importantly it was a means of sheltering from the very powerful and potent opportunity for compassion that the situation offered. But I came to realise that conspiracy theories fed a need for simplicity in a situation so new, so unfamiliar, undigestible and complex that the truth was too hard to swallow.
In the Tarot there is a card called the Tower. It represents the shattering of reality. This could be percieved as a falling apart of everything we are familiar with. But within the card is another meaning — the potential for truth, for greater clarity.
As I process the news about Coronavirus I am also processing the reactions of the people I come into contact with. I am recognising some similarlities with the post-911 period. Of course it is different — it is an entirely new kind of ‘enemy’. But in other way, our process of incorporating the new reality it brings with it is similar.
There is disbelief, there is a stunned silence.
When people open up, sometimes I see the frantic search for explanation that often tries to avoid the truth. I see a worrying mistrust of the experts. I see a desire to not believe the government. There is an air of bewilderment, misunderstanding and despair.
My near 80 year old mother is unperturbed. Her mother survived the Spanish Flue. She has faith in herself, the health system, us her children. I see in her a role model of mental resilience. Amongst peers of my own age, some are self isolating already as they are immune-supressed and this seems prudent. Others are not immune supressed but are also self-isolating and this is a worry. Some are brushing the whole thing off, ignoring it entirely. Others are already devising conspiracy theories to explain what they canot understand. I recognise their fear. I see panic in the empty shelves at Sainsbury’s. It feels familiar and it worries me.
In times of adversity and rapid change, how we respond is crucial — not just to our own well being but the collective good.
Here is an opportunity here to recognise a reality shift and react. We can reach out to those around us who many be vulnerable or afraid of contracting the illness and offer our support, our solidarity and our hope. Or we can fall into hopelessness and despair, frantic with worry for ourselves, our finances, the certainty that we hold dear.
This virus brings change and not all of it is bad. The goverenment is spending a fortune to mitigate the worst of it — money will be pumped into public services badly starved of cash. This is good.
Thousands of commuters who bear the daily grind of travelling into work to simply sit behind a desk will now test out working methods and practices long overdue by companies who simply lacked the trust to alow them to work this way all along. The environment will benefit from all those needless flights, now cancelled.
We will all realise the difference between what we want and what we actually need.
People ask, “How will it be possible to close schools? How will people cope?” They will cope by doing what all people have always done in adversity — pulling together with their neighbours, their friends, their family and the services that support them. This social fabric is always there, invisible in the background. Now we will see it and it will make us feel good. This is what the elderly in Britain call the “Spirit of the Blitz”. This near-legenday ability to cope under great pressure will awaken us from our daily daydream of selfhood into a collective sense of purpose.
Frontline staff keeping public services running will be our heroes — the doctors, nurses, paramedics and all the support staff who keep the NHS running will deserve and receive our deep gratitude. We can volunteer — to deliver food parcels to needy families, to visit isolated elderly neighbours, to fetch essential supplies for those who cannot help themselves.
This is a shock, yes, but we need to wake up and recognise the great opportunity for transformation that it contains.
We do not have to sit at home obsessing about the statistics. We can practice love, compassion and care for ourselves and eachother. We can stay healthy and well. We can protect our own mental health and the mental health of others by listening to the advice of experts and trusting that they are telling us the truth. We cannot afford to retreat into fear. The scientists and experts who are advising the government need to be listened to, respected.
This pandemic is a real, human tragedy, playing out across the world. Governments are doing their best to offset the worst cost to the most vulnerable in society. It is a just cause and a human story that needs a humanist response.
Our lives are about to change but it’s OK.
Great good can come from this adversity. It is an opportunity for transformation. Let’s not waste it.
For Dalton who looked into the abyss and didn’t recover. Rest in Peace sweet friend.
