One thing some of us have more of because of the COVID-19 pandemic is time to think. And the daily news provides us with ample substance for thought.
Thus I have been thinking about many scattered topics. Some of them relate to things I said to myself (and confessed in my book) about being old and growing older, and prominent among these is my resolve to keep growing as long as I live. You know what I mean. I see what an imperfect person I am, but I remain encouraged that I can change. And one of the keys to change is simply learning.
New facts tend not to get filed in my head as just random trivia. At least not most of the time. They get hooked somehow to things I think I already know, topics I am interested in or attitudes I have developed.
The pandemic itself, for instance, and what we are being taught about this scary disease, is in the mental file of health issues needing my awareness. It calls for unusual caution and motivates me to practice good hygiene, take the supplements that help me resist infections and avoid for now unnecessary mingling with people.
However, as the situation progresses, some advice we were given at the beginning has been revised. And some disease experts, especially the director of the CDC, have been ridiculed for saying one thing three months ago and another, somewhat contradictory thing, now.
This should not surprise us. One thing you can rely on a scientist to do is to say something new. Those of us who are so old that we were in high school in the early forties remember being taught that the atom was the smallest unit of matter and could not be split. I for one felt a bit deceived to find out soon afterwards that, while I was learning this, scientists were splitting the atom! Examples of less consequence than that one happen almost every day. Medical science has recently removed from the market a drug I have been taking for years, declaring it harmful.
Only a little bit of fair thinking will help us realize that this pandemic is something we have never experienced before. There have been pandemics but never this specific one. Our scientists, like the rest of us, started out to fight a new and unknown enemy and through intense collection and study of information gleaned from various sources, they have learned, and they have told us what they are learning, constantly revising their advice, based on this growing knowledge.
Even our country has grown through the years in a similar way. Our founders predicted this need and made a way for the country to expand our constitution through amendments. This gave us the power to add thoughtful principles to our way of living together. Because of our ability to add amendments, people who couldn’t vote when the constitution was written can vote now. A lot of people are freer now than they were then. And because of all this we can always hope to make a better country.
We have protests and conflict in our streets, because we have some more growing to do. We are not perfect, and we know it. There are things we need to think about, wrongs we need to correct, as a nation. And this can happen because we, as individuals, have a growing edge. We can learn from one another and from circumstances.
It was easy to see when were raising children that they were constantly different. We had to teach them to tie their shoes. Later they show ed us how to use our new phone. There were days when they acted like we are enemy number one, and a few years later they sent us roses on Mother’s Day.
Honesty requires us to admit that we too, the so-called adults, were not finished products.
A long time ago I learned somehow that it was unfair to keep on judging adults, such as my husband, my friend or even a neighbor, according to what they did long ago, because like me, like children really, they were growing people, recognizing their own mistakes and becoming different because of what they were learning. I realized that being a good wife or friend or neighbor required noticing these differences and giving people space to grow.
Intelligent people change because they adjust to new information and situations. And we, as individuals and families and institutions and businesses, and even as a nation, are living through a time when the learning curve is very steep. We are having a lot of problems right now. Sadly, some of these are made worse by our unwillingness to admit evident truths and grow to fit these new revelations. A little humility is all we need.
Just yesterday an elderly friend of mine, who was feeling emotionally fragile because of a long period of isolation, told me that she had never before realized how much she needs other people.
Relevant to our individual health, emotional and spiritual, is this need for one another. I happen to be a person who can deal with a lot of time alone. But long periods of isolation are revealing my limits. I discovered this week and admitted to myself that seeing the daily news alone is the hardest part. I often cry and a time or two I have shouted at the television screen. I need somebody to discuss it with, to calm me down, to help me put it in perspective and figure out what the changing situation does to my plans.
Maybe as a nation of people we are learning how every part of our society is linked to the other parts. My own experience is an illustration of this principle. Late last year I published a new book. My publicist and I, realizing how appropriate the book was for discussion groups, decided to promote it as perfect for book clubs. We put out a couple of news pieces on this theme; then came COVID-19 and the lockdown, and we soon caught on that book clubs are mostly out of business until the pandemic passes.
Our health, the health of the country, we see now, is basic to the economy. The scope of this truth had escaped my notice until the vivid illustration of this pandemic. This knowledge is relevant to ways we can protect our society in the future, to the way we spend the nation’s money and no doubt many things I haven’t thought of yet.
The bottom line here is hopeful. This troubled, depressing period of time is not going to be wasted in our lives. Scientists will crack COVID-19 and give us a vaccine. The rest of us will, in spite of ourselves, learn something and grow. And growing citizens will adjust the system and make a healthier, kinder, fairer, freer nation. A little humility will make it happen.