The world doesn’t feel the same as it did a week ago, does it? Amazing how fast things can change for us all. I’m just going to mark time here, in the US today we reached 4,200 cases of Covid-19 (Coronavirus) with 75 deaths. Although this has been on the news for quite some time, it did not fully have my attention till this past weekend. It definitely has my attention now as the normal rhythm of life has come to a very abrupt halt.
The change in the country, the underlying hum of America, brings to mind the way things felt post 9/11. We’d all been hurt, some were hurt so much more than others. We were scared. We didn’t know how bad things were going to get. We all felt it, together. Life as we knew it stopped entirely. I feel oddly nostalgic this week for that time in my life. When we all stopped what we were doing, when we all held our children closer, when we cried for those who had been lost. When we realized how much we had been taking for granted. How we remembered that we cared for all of us. (I am not stating that this was any kind of perfect time as it was a time of distress and prejudice to those of Middle Eastern descent as much as it was national bonding to others.)
I remember that time, feeling like nothing would ever feel normal again. I had a 3-week-old baby. I remember feeling so vulnerable, so incapable of protecting my children from anything. I remember a month later for Halloween, hardly anyone came to trick or treat. I remember three months later decorating our Christmas tree in red, white and blue.
That’s the thing about retrospect, though. You know how and when things recovered. You know that NYC and DC came back to life. Three years ago, I visited New York City. I saw the 9/11 Memorial with Freedom Tower rising majestically into the sky above it. America had triumphed over that day. The economy did recover, the living got easy again. People also started fighting again. America became deeply divided again. The triumph of it became a static time in our lives.
Tragedy and triumph, they don’t happen often. Over time, we forget the smaller tragedies and triumphs in our lives. The things that were your main concerns 10 years ago right now – maybe you remember them and maybe you don’t. I don’t, particularly. How about 2 year ago? I don’t, particularly. Again. Although whatever I was facing then was important, had my attention, caused me to worry, I can’t remember those things in great detail. They were not Big Things.
While I can’t tell you much about what was the recipient of my energy or angst in March, 2018 – I can tell you when I met my Big Things. How old I was, where I was living. The brief times that make me smile or cause me a quick jab of pain to remember. The moment I began my long road out. The times I realized I was going to be OK. The details get stuck in your mind. Over time they make the road map of your life. Rural, country roads where there wasn’t a lot to see. Big cities.
A lot of our tragedies happen to us alone or to a small group around us. Tragedy can sometimes come from decisions you made that led to a bad place. Tragedy can be a major medical crisis. Tragedy can be the death of someone close to you. Tragedy can be divorce or a bad breakup. When these things befall us, through choice or chance, there are those who appear to help us through. Life can become very centralized to tragedy and the circle that is helping us through what we are facing. Other things, other people, fade into the background.
Regardless of how bad the Covid-19 Pandemic ends up being in the US, we all will have our stories to tell of how life stopped, how things we took for granted (like full grocery stores and group exercise) disappeared. The current High School seniors, ironically the group born right around 9/11, will have their stories to tell of the Proms that didn’t happen, the graduation ceremonies even. For some of us, this pandemic will be a major tragedy in the road map of our life. Although, as a nation, 79 deaths doesn’t sound significant, each one of those people were someone else’s everything. Businesses will close, those close to retirement have lost a great deal of their investments. We will all feel it in some way.
Triumph. I have found in my own life, triumph is not necessarily a single event or day, it is a period of time marked by action, your action. Our collective action. Triumph takes effort, it takes momentum. In my own life, while it is true that my greatest triumphs have followed my greatest tragedies, sometimes it has taken years to reach that point. After the Big Thing tragedies in my life, there was a time of great grief and mourning. For me, there were episodes of heavy depression that took quite a while to recover from. After I did, I started to gain momentum and eventually entered a period of great enlightenment and growth. I have seen this same process echoed in the national tragedies that have been a part of my life. Triumph takes time, effort, focus, intention.
Is triumph worth the tragedy? I’m going to give that one a hard pass. Although the triumph is great, although in the end I became a better person, became more myself, became more confident having navigated and survived whatever it was, if I could go back to before, if I could wish the tragedy away, I would be hard pressed to not do it. As far as national tragedies go, who wouldn’t undo 9/11, Pearl Harbor, World War II, Kennedy being assassinated or the Space Shuttle exploding?
Being grateful for tragedy is a level of enlightenment I don’t think I will ever reach. I’m ok with that.
These past few days, when things have changed so rapidly, when life has been taken down to a pretty basic level, there have been daily things that have brought me to tears. These have been those people already showing intention to triumph, to help, to comfort, to join in a sense of national pride. The artists sharing their work for free as a live stream. Disney releasing Frozen 2 early, the very tired looking grocery store employees still giving smiles. The videos of people in Italy playing music from their balconies and singing together. In short, seeing the better side of humanity lets me know that no matter what happens with Covid-19, Americans and the world at large will recover and will triumph.
“And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently. And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal. And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.”
Kitty O’Meara
I will leave you this week with my best wishes along with several of these moments that have brought me to tears these past few days. Messages of hope and triumph.
