Hopeful for the birth of enlightenment
Is there a larger purpose to these seemingly random horrible events?
I probably should have seen this one coming. As a fiction writer and as a doctor who has long speculated about the next pandemic threat, I know the risks. Pandemics are among the more predictable forms of natural disasters. Historically, flu pandemics occur every 30 or 40 years, but the recent ones have been relatively mild. Not since the Spanish flu, of more than a hundred years ago, has the world faced an outbreak as devastating as COVID-19. Still, I was as flabbergasted as anyone to witness it tear through our lives like a tornado.
Unlike most Canadians, I have not been forced to stay at home during the months of necessary social distancing and societal shutdown. On the contrary, as a front-line health-care worker, I’ve been expected to show up at the emergency department in Vancouver where I’ve worked for the past 20 years.
My use of the term “front line” might be hyperbolic in this case, conjuring a battlefield that I never experienced. Through a combination of luck and intelligent public health leadership and policy, British Columbia has been spared from most of the coronavirus’s wrath. There have been fewer people infected per capita in my province than in almost any region of comparable size. However, back in early March, when B.C. was reporting more cases of COVID-19 than Ontario, many feared we might go the route of other hard-hit regions, like northern Italy or New York, where health-care systems teetered on the brink of collapse.
As an emergency physician and a hospital administrator, I was terrified. I worried for my patients, my coworkers, my family and, not least of all, for myself. It’s hard to express the despair I felt in early April to learn that more than a hundred of my Italian colleagues had died from the infection. Anyone who works in an emergency department is aware of the risk one assumes on shift. Much of that risk involves losing a patient or making the wrong decision. Sometimes, the threat is more personal, as in the case of facing a potentially violent patient or getting poked with a needle that might be contaminated with a virus like HIV or hepatitis C. But I have never experienced anything like the degree of vulnerability this pandemic evoked in me at work. Early on, I believed there was a good chance I would become sick, or even worse, bring the disease home to my daughters.
But fear aside, I was also exhilarated. Never have I felt such purpose in my clinical and administrative roles. We sprang into collective action — rejigging the hospital into low- and high-risk COVID zones, where we could separate patients to prevent the spread of disease. The entire staff — cleaners, clerks, technicians, therapists, nurses and doctors — rose to meet head-on the infectious onslaught we were expecting. No one shirked their responsibility, no one asked for special treatment, and I never heard anyone complain. The risk and uncertainty seemed to only gel our camaraderie and elevate morale. My colleagues’ unassuming bravery filled me with pride. It inspired me. And, more importantly, it gave me hope.
It wasn’t only inside the hospital where I witnessed such selflessness. I saw many random acts of kindness and altruism all around me. A local restaurant that was struggling to stay afloat went to the effort of donating bagged lunches every day to health-care workers. Volunteers in my neighbourhood banded together to grocery shop and run errands for the elderly and other vulnerable neighbours to allow them to stay indoors. And a friend who works in the movie business transformed her entire wardrobe department staff into volunteer PPE manufacturers, producing wildly colourful and splashy masks.
Despite the economic stress and hardship induced by the pandemic, I’ve heard little griping among my friends. Instead, I have seen people refocus their priorities and find renewed purpose in their lives. The same applies to me. There is nothing like an existential threat to help separate the insignificant and the material from what truly matters. In the wake of COVID, I’ve re-evaluated my own life and realized that I spend far too much of my time consumed with trivial matters and, sometimes, petty concerns. The shutdown has given me a renewed appreciation for so many things I had taken for granted: a walk in the park, a game of tennis, or a face-to-face sit-down with good friends over a drink or a meal. Appreciation is one of the key elements of contentment, and therefore happiness, and I hope I can hold on to this feeling long after society ramps back up to normalcy.
The writer in me can’t help but wonder if there is a larger, interconnected purpose to the seemingly random horrible events of 2020. The Australian wildfires were a direct consequence of global warming, while the worldwide protests and marches are symptomatic of long-existing and growing socioeconomic and racial disparities. The losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are devastating, the cost to victims and their loved ones often immeasurable. But it seems to me that the world has also been given a much-needed time out. A moment for the planet to collectively breathe again. Air quality across the globe has improved. Nature has been given an opportunity for a reset. And I wonder if the same isn’t true for humanity?
It’s not unprecedented. Historically, devastating pandemics have been followed by better and often more enlightened times. There likely would have been no Renaissance were it not for the Black Death. The Spanish flu ushered in the Roaring Twenties.
So I remain cautiously optimistic that the immense suffering of 2020 has not been in vain. That once we survive the misery of this year, an improved, more appreciative, and more tolerant world might begin to emerge.