A Breath of Hope


If I had to describe life in one word right now, it would undoubtably be weird. I don't know how else to describe it. Life is just so strange. A lot of people are sick throughout the world and because of that, most major events are cancelled, my school is online, and I'm not supposed to leave my house unnecessarily. I was woken up a couple days ago by the fifth largest earthquake in Utah's recorded history. Life just feels dramatically different than how I would have guessed it would feel at this point. This isn't like any other time I can remember in my life, and I bet it's a time like no other for a lot of people throughout the world.

COVID-19, or the coronavirus, has changed a lot of things about daily life for a lot of people. Some of those impacts are small and insignificant, like people not giving as many hugs or handshakes. Some are bigger, like making people dramatically alter their plans or putting jobs on hold or closing borders. A virus that we still don't fully understand has been the cause of a lot of frustration, confusion, and panic over the past couple weeks.

I am not a doctor, and my limited knowledge of the coronavirus comes largely from the internet and what I've heard from other people. So I make no attempt here to tell people how to live or what to do or how to fight this widespread weirdness. I just want to talk a little about my experience and offer a few of my own thoughts. I know that there are a lot of people talking about this lately, and so I guess here is where I add my voice to the thousands.

Being Touched

One of the things about the coronavirus (or any cause of widespread panic) is that it's really easy to not realize that it's real or not understand its impact until it touches you personally. For example, over the course of my lifetime I have heard of many instances of mass shootings. I live in the United States, where the rate of mass shootings is higher than in any other country. It's something that I was so used to hearing about that eventually it didn't even come as a surprise. But this isn't about mass shootings. What it is about is that, while I could imagine (kind of) what it was like to be in a mass shooting or lose someone I cared about in that way, I had never had any personal experience with one and because of that, it was hard to really understand what impact a mass shooting actually has on those involved.

Last August, I was living in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and I could see the border fence between the United States and Mexico every day. One day, I was helping a family move and we paused to take a break. As we were sitting around eating some pizza, I heard a teenage girl in the family say something like "Oh my, there was a shooting at in El Paso." El Paso, Texas was the city I could see over the fence. Like reports of other mass shootings, I felt bad, and it felt weird because this was the closest (geographically) I had ever been to such an event. But it didn't really hit me until a couple days later. The shooting, I learned, had taken place in a Walmart shopping center. So it shocked me when I was visiting another family I knew well and they said, "That shooting happened at the Walmart we shop at. That's the one we always go to."

Now I know, I didn't lose anyone I knew or cared about in this shooting. But I could have, and that's what made this shooting somehow seem more real to me. Some people I cared about were frequent visitors to that place, and I finally had a real connection. I was lucky; I didn't lose anyone. I send my deepest sympathy to anyone who has been involved in or lost someone to a mass shooting. My point is that sometimes, major events (especially events that cause panic, distress, or sorrow) don't seem as real if a person doesn't feel any particular connection to them.

This is where things get interesting to me in terms of the coronavirus. For a while, it was something so distant. Oh, there's a new disease affecting some people in China. That sucks, we thought, before we moved on with our day. Oh dear, now some people in a few other countries, including the US, are sick and some have died. How terrible, we said to each other, sympathizing only as long as the news was in our face.

But then, Tom Hanks got sick.

And we suddenly had a connection to the coronavirus.

I am not here to make any commentary on Tom Hanks as a person. What I'm saying is that once he got sick, a lot of people started talking about and treating the coronavirus as something more real. Why? Because we all know Tom Hanks. Most of us don't know him personally, but I bet a lot of people have seen him in a movie or two. We could all recognize his voice, and a few of us might ask for a picture if we saw him at the airport. He doesn't know us, but we know him, so his contraction of the disease was one of our friends getting sick. It was a neighbor, a relative, a coworker. Tom Hanks made it real for people because they had someone to connect to. We were touched by the disease because someone we know (even in the sense of "knowing" a celebrity as much as anyone can truly "know" a celebrity) got it.

What I'm saying is that no one treated this as a real thing until they were touched by it. People in China probably treated this as something very real months ago. The National Basketball Association was taking precautions as they felt necessary, but didn't cancel games until one of their players got sick. It got real for the NBA when they were touched by the virus personally. Others caught on slowly and now most people treat this as a real thing with real implications for all of us that requires real actions. Governments throughout the world have taken actions to combat the virus. Jobs, schools, and routines have been cancelled or altered significantly because it became real to us.

What if we didn't have to wait to be touched in order to treat something as real? And I don't just mean this in terms of the coronavirus. I don't just mean it in terms of bad things either. What if we didn't need to be slapped in the face by world hunger before we did something about it? What if climate change didn't have to poke us so hard before we really made a significant effort to fight it? What if we weren't pushed by separation before we told the people we love that we love them?

What if we didn't wait to be touched before we decided to live?

Social distancing is cool, but weird.

Last week, I went to visit some family to play some games and spend some time together. We hugged and laughed and had a good time and everything was pretty normal. One cousin, though, came in somewhat quietly and, after saying hello, kept his distance. At first I didn't really understand what he was doing or why. It took some time (and his explanation) for me to realize that he was social distancing himself in order to be responsible and not get us sick. He said he didn't feel sick, but his wife did, and although he was pretty sure it wasn't the coronavirus, he wanted to keep his distance regardless.

In the moment, I thought it was weird. It simply felt strange to not hug or high-five or even sit next to him. But after, I thought to myself that I should be more cautious and conscious of how I interact with people to do my part to not get others sick. I haven't been perfect in the days since, but I have tried to stay inside (mostly) and keep my distance from others.

The concept is simple: keep yourself at a distance from others in order to not spread as many germs and, if one of you are infected with the virus, to not spread the virus either. It's not complicated or difficult, but in practice the initial feeling is just weird.

But it shouldn't be, and I hope it becomes more temporarily normal as long as it takes for us to stop the coronavirus from spreading.

I don't know how to make this happen, but I hope that as time goes on we get better at social distancing. I hope it becomes normal enough to the point where we don't have to explain why we're not as physically close as we used to be. I hope we can come together and do that, because ultimately, it might be the difference between life and death for someone. I know how dramatic that sounds. I do! I wish it weren't true, but it is. The reality is that viruses aren't spread as much by people coughing in each other's faces as they are by people being careless.

Wash you hands, keep your distance, and look out for one another. Your actions, simple as they may be, might prevent huge problems. I don't think that any one infected person will infect every single non-infected person at the same time. But I think that one becomes two and two becomes four a lot faster if we aren't careful. Panic isn't the answer to all of this. It's simple hygiene, a little bit of caution, and some sense.

There are so many bright, happy outcomes as part of the changes we're making right now.

With all the sad and scary news going around now, I want to share some happy things that are happening because of the changes we've had to make over the past little while. Although I am sure there are more, here are some pieces of good news I've found on twitter recently.
I know that not everything is great in the world right now, but look! Animals and the environment thriving! People helping other people! Isn't that something to be happy about?

I choose to have hope.

While I know that not everyone in the world is happy or healthy right now, I still have an insane amount of hope. I hope that people are using this unique time to spend more of their days with the people they care about. I hope more people are doing things they love—or discovering new things to love. I hope that people are choosing to be happy. And I hope that when this is all over and we don't have to quarantine ourselves anymore, that these things we started doing—the things that really helped us find peace and the things that made us laugh during these difficult times—don't fade away. I hope that people find a new life, and they remember that they have the power to make their life what they want to be, even if all the ingredients to their perfect life aren't immediately within their grasp. I believe, I truly believe, that you can be happy wherever you are, even when the sun keeps seeming to hide from you and the light and warmth you so desperately crave seems unobtainable. On those cold, desolate nights, I can only say one thing: go look for some firewood.

I hope we can all find ourselves and never lose ourselves again. I hope we stop trying to be what others want us to be and start living our lives the ways we want to live, even if that includes a judgmental stare or a piece of criticism once in a while. The secret is that no one actually knows what they're doing, and anyone pretending they do is just as lost as you are. I contend that no one truly has it "figured out" enough to tell you with any validity that you can't wear something you feel good in or that you shouldn't do something in your own way. Take some time to discover you, and when we come out of our houses and life goes back to "normal", don't hide the real you again. Because when the day comes that you look back on your life, I want you to be able to recognize yourself.

 I hope we never get lost in the sea of sadness or the entanglement of everyday life even when our normal routines return. I hope that we look back on these days and say, "Those were strange times, but I'm better because of it."

I'm not so naive to assume that every effect of a global pandemic will be positive. But I think we have at least some power to choose hope, even if that hope isn't everything that is in us. Even if that hope is just a breath that keeps us going for one more day, I think it's worth it to keep breathing that air and try our best to stay above the surface.




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