Since we have now passed the one-year anniversary of our encounter with COVID-19, this might be a good time to review what we have learned.
Following the Old Testament example, I have come up with a list of ten things I have noticed. Some are based upon my own experience, and others are observations based on watching too much television while living in Coronaville with my wife and a series of rescue dogs.
- Working from home digitally reduced both traffic congestion and carbon pollution;
- We are now all aware (as some of us teachers were twenty years ago) that on-line education has a long way to go before it can result in effective learning;
- We all have a renewed appreciation of family and friends—most of the time;
- We now know that even a serious pandemic threat to humanity will not significantly reduce our distrust of people who think, look, or act differently than we do;
- Whether we are alone or crowded together with others, we need pets with us when we are quarantined;
- We have learned that we can be kind and compassionate to each other for a short period (March to May, 2020) but do not have the patience to do so for the long term (June,2020 to May, 2021);
- We have learned that going out to lunch or dinner really is a big deal, not “small potatoes”;
- We really do have time to hone a hobby, rediscover reading, or finally learn to cook;
- We have learned that it can be fun drinking beer in someone’s back yard, socially-distanced, with a mask, weather permitting;
- We have learned, to our credit, that even a pandemic of unusual size cannot keep us from voting or going to the streets to seek justice and “redress of grievances.”
Yes, we have learned many things about ourselves, some that are encouraging
and others discouraging. As Pogo said in the old cartoon: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
But we have also seen light at the end of the spiked Covid tunnel. Things we have lived through, among them the stresses induced by living in Coronaville, the death of George Floyd and its aftermath, and the alarmist TV news programs, have made us more aware of systemic racism in our country’s culture and institutions.
We are also more alert than ever before to the possibility of drastic, rapid changes in our earth’s climate that could destroy both our civilization as well as many living species (even us) on this planet.
It is hard for some of us to sort out what we have learned, as is evident by the mixed nature of my “Ten Learnings.” In 1849 the French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote “the more things change, the more they remain the same.”
This might be a useful truth to remember while we listen to all the hype about how COVID will change things. Americans are born with a pretty strong “change gene.” We are taught to expect change, which we sometimes confuse with improvement. We naively expect the future to automatically be better than the past: we are Americans, after all, and favored by God and History.
Sarcasm aside, what COVID-19 should have taught us is that we can change things—for better or worse—depending upon our intentions and actions. Our experience with COVID can result in a better world for all of us, but not if we just want to return to “old normal” as quickly as possible.
To really learn from this experience we need to do more than just get vaccinated and listen to science more carefully than in the past. We also need to end our national love affair with greed and selfishness, stop worshiping our unhealthy version of unrestrained capitalism, one that values money and power more than human lives.
Beyond that isn’t it is actually time to begin treating others as we would like to be treated, whatever their color, religion, sexual orientation, or where they were born? That may be what COVID was trying to tell us.
It also might not hurt to take a hard look at that original list of ten dos and don’ts that Moses brought down the mountain some time ago.