As the whir of ambulances have continued to pass by under the window of my second floor apartment, it’s felt at times during the last month as if there were only life and death in New York City. As if these two immutable facts, living and dying, had suddenly left us all squeezed somewhere in the wasteland between their antipodes.
While waiting out the Covid-19 plague, each of us has had to find ways of dealing with this new reality. Between our masks and the fresh air, between our apartments and our computers, we have all been struggling to make more room in our abruptly tiny lives. Everything, as it tends to do in the midst of a crisis, feels as if it is both expanding and collapsing, as if time has stopped as it stretches out to the far ends of an anxious continuum. Inflamed and deflated.
During events like these, we tend to lose sight of the relationship we must maintain with ourselves in this area between extremes, the area within which we carve out and create our lives. One might find one’s self asking—How had there ever been time for art in the course of human history? Or sunsets? Or space to contemplate the meandering narrative of a 19th century novel? A song by Lizzo? Somewhere in the space between the endless stretch of hours and our helpless anxiety, we must strive to rediscover our capacity to make meaning.
Creating mystery out of hard facts is not just the secondary effect of a degree in the humanities. It is the very thing that forges the future. The ability to symbolize is a singularly human act of transcendence. It is what allows us to overcome death. Or at least it offers us the potential to overcome the terror lurking in the persistent yet ephemeral realities that frame our lives. Can you see your past? Maybe. Maybe in some constructed way you can reach an approximation of your objective history. How about your future? Seems the likely answer is no. “No, I certainly cannot see my future!” But the truth is one cannot be expected to tolerate the onslaught of moments like these, moments that confront us with the stark fact of mortality, without the ability to imagine, even if only symbolically, the ongoingness of one’s total self—one’s past, present and future.
It is said that twenty-five percent of those with the novel Coronavirus will feel no symptoms, but thousands will die. Some of us will bond deeply with our families for the first time in years. Others will have holes punched into the fabric of their clans and communities. All of us will have to reconcile with the tattered world we will be left with once this event is bracketed as a piece of the past. With more of everything pressing itself into our awareness, we need to keep our experiences thinkable. With everything narrowing the space required to live, we now, more than ever, need to think the thoughts that make us human. We will all celebrate the frontline essential workers. We will celebrate the unity we now feel as a global community. We will celebrate the births taking place in the same hospitals that hold intubated loved ones struggling to pull through. We will celebrate living and dying.
Please do not despair. Please keep making meaning out of the lives we still have. No matter how tiny everything feels right now, whatever beauty you can make out of this rock hard world matters.
Love, P