Welcome April but keep in mind its cruelty
T.S. Eliot told us that April is the cruelest month.
When he wrote his famous poem, “The Waste Land,” he described a widely shared sense that the world was going through a difficult rebirth in the wake of World War I.
Eliot had seen his generation devastated by wartime deaths and, as we have been reminded in the last year, deaths from the flu pandemic that swept the world from 1918 to 1920.
To make sense of that loss, and to describe the challenge of moving forward into what felt like a new spring, he wove several metaphors: ancient mythologies of kings who had to die so their followers might get life-sustaining harvests, tarot card symbolism and the circle of life it implies, the figure of Tiresias who has been both a man and a woman, and the demoralized, deadened conversations of men and women in working-class England.
Above all, though, he wrote about his powerfully mixed feelings as he prepared to embrace the possibilities for the rebirth of culture in a modern world entering what felt like a new season.
That should have been a good thing, right? Instead of April’s being cruel, it should have been comforting. Don’t we all love the sense of fresh beginnings as the weather warms?
Eliot explored the opposite of that feeling, though. He asked us to look at the pain, the cruelty, of shaking off the dead part of ourselves as we try to live again.
He insisted rebirth is harder than we imagine, and many of us are experiencing that same strange frustration as we contemplate not just the new life that April always brings but also the prospect of new life as the COVID-19 pandemic finally subsides.
Like almost everyone, I hated the way the pandemic broke down our sense of community. Even when we weren’t fighting over politics and policy, we had to learn to live apart. I’m privileged to teach great students every semester; in the last year, even though I’ve met my classes in person, it’s been with masks and socially distanced. Weeks into the semester, I’m still so disconnected that I often don’t recognize my own students outside the classroom.
Even as I hated it, I learned to live in the new normal. I spent more time reading, exercising and daydreaming. As I pulled away from others, I burrowed into myself, exploring a few good ideas and wasting time on many others. I settled into a less lively but comfortable space, one that will take work to break out of. I want to be back in the world with old friends, but inertia, and sometimes fear, make that tougher.
And now, as I look at the prospect of living in the world again, I’m nervous. I look forward to bumping into friends in the world outside Zoom, but I know it will mean using social skills I’ve half forgotten. It will mean fighting the habit of sliding into my own head. It will mean remembering that other people can see — and judge — me in a space where I can’t just mute my camera if I’m feeling self-conscious.
Being open to others you happen to meet means being open to chance and to change. It means making yourself vulnerable. And it hurts, it’s frightening, to think about peeling off the shell I’ve let grow over the last year.
That mixture of feelings is an ancient sensation, and Eliot tried to tell us that. Decades later Pink Floyd sang about becoming “comfortably numb,” while Jerry Garcia and his bandmates assumed the identity of the Grateful Dead. Those artists all saw that it is sometimes more comforting to “stay dead” than to embrace the opportunity and challenge of new life.
That’s where many of us are as this April dawns. April is kind in the warm weather it brings, and this April is kinder than most as it promises vaccines and a restored freedom we have craved.
But, as we get ready to enjoy the rebirth of spring, it’s useful to reflect on the simultaneous challenge of that experience. Ancient religions told us that the king must die for the rest of us to live. This new life comes with promise, but it’s born in discomfort.
So, welcome April, welcome spring.
Keep in mind their cruelty too. It’s going to feel great to live our full lives again, but don’t be surprised if you feel pain as part of the process.