COVID-19 crisis calls for unity and optimism. We have little of either.

The man I used to think of as my Occasional Muse seemed to have disappeared.

Last we “spoke” (via email three years ago), he had warned that time was of the essence if we were to have a long-intended face-to-face meeting. He wasn’t getting any younger, he said, though his sharp mind belied any sign of age-related deadlines. Lesson: Never postpone what you may later regret.

Though we never did meet, William “Van” Dusen Wishard is alive but not well, according to his son, with whom I spoke last week. Now 90, he’s unable to continue our conversation but he will know that his words were not wasted on me.

Wishard, a treasured correspondent, wrote frequently to encourage, criticize or advise me but mainly to urge me to convey to readers his concerns about the future.

A trend analyst known as “Van” to the presidents, congressional conferences and corporate leaders around the world he advised, Wishard believed that we humans are caught up in a head-spinning era of change and a resulting crisis of meaning and identity. The big changes, outlined in his 2000 book, “Between Two Ages: The 21st Century and the Crisis of Meaning,” are not passing concerns, such as China’s trade policies or Russia’s obsession with empire; they are the revolutions occurring simultaneously in technology, bioethics, economics and migration patterns that are gradually altering national identities.

Wishard was especially adamant that our leaders need to be well-versed in the source of our instability and understand the deeper roots, not just the reality, of what we’re experiencing as a nation and a world. Someone who could lead a discussion of why the world seems to be coming apart — and what we can do about it. Pandemic didn’t come up in our virtual exchanges, but he did say something in our last conversations that has haunted me.

Wishard predicted that the 2016 election would be our last “normal” election, as we think of them. He feared the country was split so deeply along partisan and values lines that governing would become increasingly difficult for either party to accomplish. And he prophesied that the ensuing chaos might make some less resistant to a militaryrun government.

His fear struck me as overwrought and even outlandish. Never in America. But now the notion seems less far-fetched, as folks with guns who are hostile to the lockdown prowl the streets in Ohio, and a customer shoots a security guard in Flint, Michigan, for enforcing the wearing of face masks.

The coronavirus pandemic isn’t the worst problem we’ve faced, but it is evidence of the globalization of all things, good and bad. What begins with one person in a remote place, whether an upper respiratory virus or a tectonic-shifting technological advance, can infect and affect millions around the world to dazzling or deathly effect.

We are not, at the moment, oversupplied with leadership to meet this test. America has generally been lucky throughout its history: When faced with an existential crisis, the nation has somehow miraculously produced the kind of president — Washington, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt — who has, in the face of a do-or-die challenge, built a bridge to the future. Americans hunger for an aspirational message of unity and optimism. Or, as another president put it, hope and change.

But we need some and soon. Maybe he or she waits in the wings — or perhaps is just being born. Let’s hope he or she materializes quickly, lest we find ourselves saluting our president someday.

Or, worse, lest we find ourselves in a world so unhinged and adrift that we discover that there’s no path back toward civilization. It has always hung by a thread, which seems today in danger of fraying.

See, Mr. Wishard? You remain my muse after all.