How are you doing?
As we stand in the midst of this storm of global pandemic of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), our footing unsure, our hearts trembling… many of us have begun asking each other, more than we did before, “how are you doing?” And really meaning the question. Actually pausing to hear their response. For once, we have the time!! And because “fine,” “all right,” and “okay,” are just not enough any longer as responses to this question!
Below are some of my reflections at this time in response to this question.
I invite you to share here your response to this question as well. Let us stay connected in new and unexpected ways, as much as we can.
My personal journey with COVID-19 until now
On my end, it has been an interesting journey. In the beginning of the coronavirus news spree, in retrospect, I was both callous, and significantly judgmental of those who I saw as “freaking out,” and acting hypochondriac. That shifted for me in one day – in the middle of last week – when I actually sat and read an article by a teacher I respect – who spoke not only of the spiritual aspects of the experience, but also provided ample links to scientific findings. I then started to follow links to other links and very soon, I was convinced that we were indeed speaking of a pandemic on an unprecedented scale.
Meanwhile, working at the Weill Cornell Medical College, I am inundated with policy directives across the medical school and our affiliated hospitals. The directives escalated from a few messages about washing hands to now a daily email message from the Dean of the Medical School, and a weekly, more detailed, video message from him. Plus, multiple emails a day from individual administrative departments. I am also guilty of sending out multiple policy directives to our users as a Core Facility director!
Starting today (Monday, March 16, 2020), all our classes go online. All meetings are over Zoom. Today, we heard that all research projects need to be shut down by Friday, unless they are deemed “essential” (the definition of such designation yet to be agreed upon).
I see the value in self-isolating at this stage, and totally buy the argument for “flattening the curve” as a way not to overwhelm our medical system. I am privy to discussions about contingency plans in our ER, ICUs and pulmonary care units – and they do sound apocalyptic!
However, I cannot self-isolate. I am one of the co-Directors of our Microscopy and Image Analysis Core Facility. This means that me, along with two of my colleagues, are responsible for all the research microscopes and image analysis workstations used by the vast majority of the researchers in the medical school. We have instituted personal protective policies for users – including using gloves and lab coats while working on our instruments, and not crowding in microscope rooms. However, we do not want them to decontaminate surfaces, because we have some very expensive equipment (many costing upwards of $600,000 each), which can be ruined if sprayed by the wrong chemicals, or with too much of the right chemical. So, we have ourselves taken on the responsibility of decontaminating all surfaces touched by the users several times each day.
Plus, last Friday, just before we left for the weekend, two of us co-Directors agreed to an arrangement with our Environmental Health and Safety office that if any of our users were to come down with COVID-19, the entire facility would be shut down for decontamination. EHS will decontaminate the rooms, but the two of us will come in, wear the necessary protective gear, and decontaminate our instruments under their direction. This is important because we are dealing with electronics and exposed optics, which can easily be destroyed if treated with certain chemicals.
So, for now, I am taking public transport to get to work. I am trying to keep appropriate distance on public transport, exploring alternate routes that are less crowded, and making a ritual of washing my hands often. Just today, we stopped all activities at our Core Facility that requires face to face contact (e.g., hands-on training and assisted use of microscopes). All consults are now being done over Zoom.
It is very likely that things will slow down further by the end of this week, when all “nonessential” research is required to stop for an undetermined period of time.
So, right now, I am on an escalated schedule – making sure everything is battened down before the storm hits! I am anticipating the lull that may (or may not) come next week – and trying to feel into how that would look. On one hand, I can truly relish some me-time. On the other, if it comes, it will be flavored by large scale human suffering.
I am sitting with all that this time entails. I am sure we are witnessing a historic moment, with large scale repercussions.
My current reflections on what this global crisis may be here to teach us
So, internally, I am in a meditative place. While I am aware of the horror of what is already unfolding in much of the world, I am actually hopeful about several possible outcomes.
We are finally being forced to recognize that we do live in one world. We can no longer see what is happening somewhere in the world as “their problem,” as we have done with SARS, MERS, Ebola, or for that matter, the annual floods in Bangladesh. There are no “privileged ones” here – who will be kept safe because of their money, status, education, or any other social variables. We are just all human beings, trying to do the best we can.
I am recognizing that entire social order has changed, for the better, after each major epidemic. We can think of the public health awareness brought on in the wake of the Plague, or the Spanish Flu. Or the human rights changes in response to the AIDS epidemic of the ‘80s. Or the understanding and humanization of PTSD post-Vietnam war. I cannot imagine that we will be able to continue our status quo into 2021.
In the USA, I think we are really being asked to think about the social safety net. A lot of people in the entertainment industry and food services are losing their jobs, or more will lose their jobs in the months to come. A lot of people will likely be sick, without health insurance. How will we respond to it as a society? Will it finally force us to rethink social medicine? Maybe even Universal Minimum Wage? We know that we have the resources for both. But will this crisis finally bring on the will?
I am heartened to see all the ways that ordinary people are reaching out to help others. People all around me are offering free online meditation and prayer groups, classes, or offering to shop for their elderly neighbors. There is a greater sense of being there for each other. I have seen this before after 9/11, during the New York blackouts. But this time, the scale seems more immense!
In a curious way, I am also seeing the whole “electronic revolution” cast in a different light. For one, it is thanks to the electronics, and even the much-maligned “social media,” that a lot of helping efforts are thriving. People are offering classes, support groups and counseling via Zoom, Facebook Live, and YouTube.
Many have complained in the recent years that everyone from pre-teens to people in their fifties are becoming increasingly asocial, and are always glued to their devices. And there is certainly truth to that. But now, with increasingly enforced “social distancing,” I am hearing the yearning in a lot of these people for real human contact. The desire to touch. To hug. To embrace. This is an interesting trend, which may unfold in very unexpected ways after the crisis is finally in control – whenever that may be.
Existentially, I feel that the veneers we had installed to shield ourselves from uncertainty are coming off. All the ways we have been masking reality to make it palatable are being removed. In truth, each of our individual future is no more uncertain today than it was a month ago, or a year ago. At some level, we have always known that the only thing we can be sure of is this moment. There is always a finite possibility, although small for most of us, that tomorrow may never come. Now, this fact has become less obfuscated. It is certainly an invitation to learn to be more mindful in our lives. And to discern what really matters, and what we can let be. Also, it is an invitation to really and truly acknowledge how little control we have, in the larger scheme of things. The latter calls for experiencing the range of feelings that go with this surrender to a larger sense of order, in whatever form we experience it.
My hope and my prayer
So, I am hopeful.
However, I also remind myself that we humans have proven spectacularly good at forgetting such lessons. Just think of the holocaust and the learning opportunities that we abdicated! Once there’s a vaccine that works, maybe in the first quarter of 2021, will we just go back to business as usual?
My gut tells me that if we do, Mamma Earth will continue to escalate the lessons. I sense that she is finally fed up! We ignored the floods, the fires. Now we have the pandemic. If we don’t learn from this how to live as a species – and as only one of the millions of species on this earth, I am afraid that the lessons will continue to come. When I see what is happening in India, for example, in terms of the communal strife that shows few signs of abating even in the face of this global crisis, I am afraid that maybe we have not yet reached the threshold of punishment where we will begin to fundamentally reorient how we live with each other.
I sincerely and fervently hope that I am wrong on that count. That we learn our lessons this time around. We don’t have to perfect. We are not called to be perfect. I think we are called to just stop and reflect before we act. Think past the very next step – to the repercussions that that step will have. In the years and decades and centuries to come.
Maybe finally, we will earn our name of Homo sapiens (from sapientia, meaning wisdom, discernment and memory).
May it be so!
Finally, my reflections on “wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds”
And finally, a little tangential reflection on the “wash your hands” business.
I think that in addition to the very important pragmatic implications of this admonition, there is a deeper invitation here.
It is my contention that we are being asked to re-sacralize ritual, and also our relationship to the natural elements.
Re-sacralizing ritual
Ritual is a part of life that puts us at ease, although we often do not recognize what we do as ritual. Whether it is that perfect cup of steaming coffee in the morning, whether it is our yoga practice or the morning run, or going out for a drink with friends on Fridays after work… rituals abound in our lives. It is time that we acknowledged these rituals for the important functions they serve in our lives.
As we stand at the threshold of the unknown with the global pandemic, I think a simple ritual of “wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds” may be much more important than just getting rid of the germs. Here are two of my favorite quotes that speak to this.
“A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres… At this threshold a great complexity of emotions comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossing were always clothed in ritual.”
— John O'Donohue“This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don’t have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn’t have the specific ritual you are craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a generous plumber/poet.”
— Elizabeth Gilbert
Meditations on water
And finally, the ritual that we are being called to perform has to do with water, and cleansing.
Sure enough, washing our hands, our bodies, ritual ablutions, have always been part of many religious traditions. These practices are often invoked at threshold moments – as we prepare ourselves to encounter the non-ordinary. Think of the ritual ablutions in Islam before entering the mosque to pray. Think of the hundreds of thousands of Hindus bathing in the holy rivers. Think of lovingly bathing the body of a beloved deceased one, before it is prepared for its final journey. Or think of the indigenous wisdom, as expressed in these words:
“Water sustains all life. Her songs begin in the tiniest of raindrops, transform to flowing rivers, travel to majestic oceans and thundering clouds and back to earth again. When water is threatened, all living things are threatened.”
– Indigenous Declaration on Water, 2001
Or, if there’s a resistance to this image, if it feels too “woo-woo,” then think of a modern and secular cleansing ritual. Think of the surgeons scrubbing their hands – with a specific set of strokes – for a specific length of time – before they enter the “inner sanctum” of the operating room!
So, how would it be if we took the current admonition of “wash hands often” not as an extra chore, done grudgingly, but as a ritual done to put our hearts at ease?
And while at it, what if we reflected on water as a resource, a blessing? According to many indigenous traditions, water is a Being. Traditions that are older and wiser than ours, often see rivers and lakes and oceans as our brothers and sisters, as our mothers and grandmothers. Traditions pray to Yemaya as the goddess of the oceans… If this line of exploration draws you, check out this video
I also know that a proportion of you reading this will not be touched by the above set of imagery. For you, I have a different invitation – just as magical! What if I quoted from an article in the Science section of the New York Times from 2016:
“Earth is old. The sun is old. But do you know what may be even older than both? Water.”
- By Nicholas St. Fleur, The New York Times (Science), April 15, 2016
As you wash your hands with soap and water, yet again, I invite you to think of the following.
Each molecule of this water, H2O, is made up of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. The two hydrogen atoms in each of those molecules is 13.7 billion years old (almost as old as the universe itself), and the oxygen is at least 4.5 billion years old (and likely older)! (For a deeper discussion of this timeline, see my blog post here.)
So, my invitation to us all, including myself, is to reflect on the beauty, the mystery, and the divinity of water – as we continue to wash our hands in order to protect ourselves, and others, from the ravages of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)!!
The invitation, again
So, I have shared above my meandering thoughts at this time. Below, please share yours. Let’s keep each other accompanied through this journey. As our beloved Ram Dass used to say, let us walk each other home!