On September 11, 2001, I was scheduled to fly from South Bend, Indiana, to Augusta, Georgia for my grandmother's 80th birthday celebration. I was driving to the airport when the world changed. I headed to the University of Notre Dame campus instead, where I was a graduate student, and slowly realized that no one would be getting on a plane for quite some time.
My mentor encouraged me to get in my car and drive instead. Somewhere along the way I picked up two small American flags and attached them to my windows. I did so in spite of my growing discomfort with conspicuous patriotism in light of all I had learned about my country's history and the way that the rest of the world perceived us. I did so out of solidarity. As I drove south and east, truck drivers honked and gave me the thumbs-up, and I felt reconnected to the blue-collar segment of the population I had grown up in and among. There were dire predictions of shortages and price-gouging, but all I encountered along the way was communal caring, suffering, and consolation.
I remember feeling like the world was upended, and that nothing would ever be the same again. I remember being comforted by my father, who himself remembered World War II, the upheavals of Vietnam, and a time of public assassinations. We will go on; life will resume.
During the two days of that drive, and the ensuing time with my extended family, it was easy to believe that in our sorrows we would find the best part of ourselves, that we would reach out to and take care of each other. And to some degree we did. But then violence always begets violence, and we are all still suffering from the effects of our own violence in the face of intense, all-consuming fear.
We are now facing another crisis, of a quite different sort. The aggressor is a pathogen, and we have no idea what to do with our fear of it. It is easy to minimize the importance of this violent emotion, but it has been behind so much destruction, so much suffering, and so much failure to make reasoned decisions in the face of dire need. It seems to me that we all need to be attending to three of its particular effects right now.
Xenophobia: It is not surprising that with a microscopic enemy, we look around for a bigger one. But the novel coronavirus is not a "Chinese" virus, nor an Asian virus. It is just a virus--one of nature's marvels, in a way. It is an equal-opportunity pathogen, and we have no time or energy to waste fearing the other or stigmatizing whole groups of people who may in fact be our fellow citizens and are most definitely our fellow human beings. We are all equally vulnerable and equally responsible for doing whatever we can to mitigate the damage, without adding to the suffering through ignorant cruelty.
Exponential Burdens on the Already Burdened: Threats to physical health and the health of the economy are both harder on those whose lives are already hard, especially the poor. When those of us who are relatively privileged find an empty space on a grocery shelf, we probably still have enough food in our cupboards to keep our families well-fed for weeks. But what is this like for the family buying just what they can to get by, day by day? When colleges and universities send their students home, it is the socio-economically disadvantaged students who cannot access online learning or sometimes familial support to continue their education at a distance. When we shut down public events and spaces, it is the workers without steady salaries or benefits who lose not just recreation but livelihood. Of course we may still need to shop for emergency supplies, move away from face-to-face instruction, and limit public gatherings. But we must do so with full awareness of these costs for those for whom the costs of living are already so high, and try as best we can to stitch together a safety net that we have failed to plan for.
Trauma to the Constitutionally Vulnerable: Fred Rogers is famous for telling children that in moments of crisis they should "look for the helpers." His idea was not that adults would have all the answers, but that children needed not to be responsible for taking care of themselves, improving the situation, or processing it alone. We need to remove this burden for our children, let them talk about their fears, and do our best not to increase them. We also need to pay special attention to those with anxiety disorders, and those whose age, health, or other circumstances make it impossible for them to exercise agency in response to this crisis.
Of course, as we are all human, we are all constitutionally vulnerable. But some of us won the lottery by being safe and protected as children and by remaining healthy as adults. We can afford to take some of the weight from our neighbors' shoulders.
Yet we should also, I think, resist the temptation of the strong to overestimate their strength. We are being encouraged to distance ourselves socially for the common good. But we can mostly still hug those closest to us, and if our need to protect ourselves or them precludes even this, tell them of our continued love. These small gestures are great and powerful weapons against the most intimate fears, which remain some of the most dangerous. They can still help us access the best parts of ourselves, enable us to take care of one another, and provide a small glimmer of hope in the face of our stubborn refusal to learn from history.
