Do better, then feel better, that’s my pandemic prescription
In the days of flash photography, I toured the catacombs of Rome with a group of Greek tourists, an experience comparable to what I imagine itwould be like to walk through a Murano glass factory in the company of a band of large and particularly feral cats.
For Greeks, like cats, worship their personal freedom to a degree that often disregards all other considerations and view “rules” as being chiefly intended for those foolish enough to followt hem.
“Before we enter,” our guide told us at the tour’s start, “I must tell you, photography is not allowed. It can damage the tombs and artwork.”
Though she spoke thewords in Greek, it might aswell had been Sanskrit. Aswe walked through the musty darkness, shutter clicks and flashes of light periodically interrupted us.
“No photography is allowed,” shewould say, each time, in the tone of someone threatening to turn this car around right now if you don’t start behaving, mister.
But the more times someone took a picture, the more people felt empowered to break the rules. If everyone else is taking pictures, I’m sure some thought, why should I be the only one not to get one?
That experience resonates lately as I reflect onwhy, exactly, it’s so tough to get Americans to do a few simple things: stay home as much as possible, and wear masks and stay 6 feet apart when you can’t.
Why are prominent chain hotels still hosting big weddings full of people not wearing masks? Why are hundreds crowding into Wicker Park basements for parties ? Why are prominent Chicago aldermen still letting people eat inside their restaurants, in defiance of state regulations?
It’s no use telling me people simply don’t want to followthe rules, for we can use all of the ink in all of the vats at Tribune Publishing’s printing center listing the things you or I do not want to do thatwe do anyway. I am, just for one example, wearing pants right nowthat do not have an elastic waistband.
Let’s also deal with the argument that the rules don’t work. I amthe parent of two small children who haven’t been sick in almost nine months. Not a roseola, not a pink eye or a rotavirus, not a hand, foot or mouth disease. They’ve been so healthy, I’ve almost forgotten the names of all the medieval-sounding illnesses I had no clue existed before I had kids. COVID rules keep people from getting sick.
Another common refrain: “What about our freedom?” It’s repeated on Twitter and Facebook and in lectures, ones often delivered by the same folks whose chief complaints until recently were the coarseness and lack of manners of young people.
Because though freedom, like oxygen andwater, is life-sustaining and invaluable in proper amounts, an excess of it can be deadly. We’ve had limits in Illinois on the number of people who can enter a church for as long as we’ve had building codes. The exercise of your freedom can’t threaten my freedom and, more urgently, my life.
Dispensing with those arguments, I have come to a different conclusion. The real culprit behind all this rule-flouting, whether it be rules established by governors or cities or just the wise counsel of scientists, is our selfishness, driven by an increasing prioritization of our own happiness above all else.
We are working harder than ever to increase our happiness, and despite those efforts, we seem to be getting sadder all the time. There’s an anxiety epidemic among children. Teenagers feel pressured in away no other generation has. The number of adults on antidepressants is constantly increasing.
Happiness, meanwhile, is more of a goal than it’s ever been. There’s an entire industry built around finding away to prevent babies from crying. Once kids get to school, they’re told education isn’t about doing their duty, becoming good citizens or improving themselves. It’s about their happiness. School is for getting the perfect job, one that makes them rich and famous and happy. The focus is out, never in.
When all of this doesn’t work, we’re sad and anxious, and, not coincidentally, more unlikely than ever before to take actions that don’t immediately gratify us. We’re more miserable, and therefore more selfish, because there has never been a time in history whenwe thought thatwe needed (or could even achieve) perfect and eternal happiness.
Happiness is a transient state, onewe pass through in scattered moments of joy aswe see our children’s faces for the first time, or in a passionate first kiss with a new love. It, like all strong emotions, fades quickly. We’re left, ifwe aren’t prepared for its departure, empty.
Good news, though: The antidote to that emptiness was discovered thousands of years ago, in the writings of wise Greek philosophers, who knew that true satisfaction, not as cheaply won or quickly lost as happiness, was inextricably linked to virtuous conduct. If youwant to feel good, do good, in other words. My husband, who is neither Greek nor a philosopher but can be wise, has said this:
“If youwant to have self-esteem, do estimable things.”
Some folks can fly dozens of their friends to a remote island, quarantine for twoweeks, test everyone and then party wildly, as if therewere no such thing as the coronavirus. The rest of us will not get through this pandemic with many sustained periods of dizzying happiness.
What we can have, what all of us can achieve, is the satisfaction of knowing we mostly tried to do the right thing. We can avoid thinking of ourselves as special or our temporary happiness as being so important. We can followthe rules, not because they make us feel happy right now, today or tomorrow, but because they might make us feel better in the long run.
After all, we might be saving a nurse from having to hold the hand of one more dying person, might be keeping a ventilator free for one more grandfather.
Sacrificing might not be fun, but maybe it can keep us warm this winter, whilewe wait anxiously for the arrival of a vaccine. Maybe it won’t make us happy, but ifwe remind ourselves of the good we’re doing, it might make us feel good enough.