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I’m supposed to help patients develop resilience, but now two of its major components — hope and optimism — are eluding me. Maybe it’s because I threw my back out and have been in bed all weekend. I’m sure it’s stress-related.
But for solace, I’m reading old magazines and rediscovering books. I own a copy of the Norton Anthology, which has followed me around since college. I picked it up again, and found William Butler Yeats’ poem, “The Second Coming” (1920), whose opening lines jumped out at me — actually, they’d been swirling in my head for days:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The falconer loses control, and “the centre cannot hold.” The famous metaphor for disorder was in my head; I think because maybe it’s us that’s losing control. Okay, I know the infection rate has dropped in New York; we’re contact tracing; more people wear masks than do not; the hospitals are no longer at capacity. But still. Just look around.
Healthcare professionals are burning out (just look at me). Colleges and schools are closing, after a brief reopening. Hunger is rising. The initial spurt in rehiring has slowed. There is a lot of pain.
There is a lot of anger. New York’s top business executives write to the mayor to clean up the streets. Drugmakers wrote to the public, assuring them that there would be no caving in to political pressure on the timing of a vaccine. There are calls to reconfigure American capitalism so that not just shareholders reap the benefits.
It’s like you feel things are shifting under your feet.
Yeats’ title invokes apocalyptic imagery to describe the atmosphere in post-war Europe. In the aftermath of the Great War, there was civil unrest and disillusionment. In Ireland, the British had sent Black and Tan troops to quell an uprising. Now there are riots in America—Portland, Seattle, Kenosha—as police and the military try to quell them. There’s an eerie similarity between then and now.
And then there’s climate change. Wildfires in Washington, Oregon, and California. Local residents are unable to breathe. Mass evacuations. The balance between nature and humans is fraying, with dire consequences. We learn that viruses jump from animals to humans because humans are invading their habitats. How can all this continue? More significantly, how will it all end?
In the poem, a “rough beast” “slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.” Who is this monster in our time? Terrorists (foreign or domestic)? A cadre of hackers that turns off the lights and cuts off the water supply? Fires, hurricanes ... or some crafty virus? It all sounds too real to be science fiction, and too off-the-charts to be real. I try to be optimistic, but my head keeps drumming Second Coming. Second Coming.
Yeats’ poem was specifically connected to the flu pandemic of 1918-1919. His pregnant wife had caught the virus and was close to death. That pandemic had death rates up to 70 percent for pregnant women. Now, COVID is more deadly for the elderly and the ill. At the current death rate, more Americans will die from the infection than were killed during World War II.
But just as insidious, the pandemic has caused us to wonder whether our institutions are willing to protect us. I didn’t say “able,” I said “willing.” Just this week, it emerged that CDC reports about the virus are being doctored to help the President minimize the risk. And we’re reassured by the President that we’re doing great! It doesn’t inspire confidence and morale.
The protests in the street are, I think, only a small part of what people would say. But who has the time or resources or confidence? We’re all just trying to keep things together.
Of course, every generation has its challenges, social unrest, and tragedies. However, even with the progress we’ve made in combating COVID, there is a sense that the worst may yet be coming: poverty and homelessness on the rise; education becoming harder; a likely second wave of morbidity and mortality when flu season starts, intensifying the effects of the pandemic. Second Coming indeed.
Our biggest challenge right now is to look ourselves squarely in the face (masks pulled up). We have to acknowledge the fault lines in our society that the pandemic has exposed. The rich are by no means immune from this pandemic, but the poorer you are, the worse you are hit. That is just a fact. When all of this is finally past, and we pick up the pieces, will we try to put them back in the same places that they were? I don’t think we can. We’ve seen too much to even dare try. The “centre” is now in a different place and, if it is going to hold, we’re going to have to think about a new kind of structure that’s much more inclusive. A lot of people are already thinking and working on it.
I have to acknowledge that it’s taken me a while to see what this pandemic has done to our society and the weaknesses that it’s exposed. For a while, maybe early this summer, I thought that we’d turned the corner. My patients seemed to be getting on with their lives, returning (more or less) to their routines. Kids were preparing for school. Parents were thinking of returning to the office. But over time, I’ve come to better appreciate that my patients, for all their issues, are not homeless. They are not hungry, or poor, or living in a part of the country ravaged by fires. They have not been the victims of systemic racism. They think they’ll be able to vote. They are among the more fortunate.
When I realized that these people are but a sliver of the world, it was eye-opening. I looked around and felt consternation. Yeats’ poem started banging around in my head. It’s important, I think, that we look outside our cozy frame of reference. There is a temptation to circle the wagons during crises and to shut the world out. But, as Yeats knew, the world is coming for us. We can’t shut it out forever, so might as well face it.
In practical terms, what does this mean? It means that we have to be more active in our kids’ education. It means that we understand that the environment is not someplace “out there” — it’s everywhere, and how we treat it affects our health. It means that we cultivate empathy, and make conscious efforts to help people who are not just like us.
If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that we’ve been basking in a sense of false security. We’re vulnerable. All of us. We have to push back against a Second Coming ... or it will come. Part of resilience is taking steps to prevent disaster, not just reacting once disaster has occurred. Start with a flu shot. Think of every day as a flu shot. Do something that builds the community — that rebuilds it in ways that make it stronger. Vote. Teach your kids that getting involved is better than just passively enjoying themselves. If they’re privileged, explain how they can use their privilege to help others.
There doesn’t have to be a Second Coming, at least in terms of an all-out apocalypse. You can cultivate a kind of optimism. Think of Churchill’s admonition: “This is not the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.” If that’s the best we can hope for, at least there’s hope in it.
