What have we learned before and after COVID?
“There are moments that mark your life. Moments when you realize nothing will be the same and time is divided into two parts, before…and after….” – Anonymous
Before and after.
Before. Almost never, ever wearing a mask unless you are a medical worker. Vaccines: routine and overwhelmingly non-political and non-partisan. Packed bars, taverns, nightclubs, concerts, and games, all without a thought or concern for crowding. Pandemic. That happened in 1918, right? Bubble: something you blow with soap and a bubble wand. Lockdown: what happens in prison sometimes.
After. Mask up! Vaccines are controversial. VERY. To get vaxxed or not vaxxed? Depends not just on public health, but for many, on politics, opinions, and personal choice versus communal responsibility. Half-filled venues, social distanced fans, and proof of vaccine please. Pandemic: no end yet in sight. Bubble: being with folks you trust; feeling safe with a select few. Lockdown: pain, isolation, lost jobs, empty streets and highways, and loneliness.
Before and after: from one moment to the next, one hour to the next, one day to the next, everything changes. Circumstances shift. Reality warps and morphs. Priorities are challenged. Values are tested.
And sometimes, life lessons are learned. Or not.
Our collective before and after marker for COVID, is, of course, found somewhere on or around March 15, 2020. The day life as we know it became life as we’ve never known it, not in our lifetimes. Some changes were startling: work from home, school from home, and Zoom. Zoom as a way of life, hours spent looking at a screen, talking to a screen, setting up a screen, freezing on a screen, getting sick of that screen.
Some changes were and still are debilitating and deadly. Deaths: 680,000 and counting. Cases: 42,500,000 and still rising. And every one of those real people, folks we love, or loved, family members, neighbors and co-workers and children and seniors. Long-term COVID health struggles and questions too.
Some changes are amazing. For many, working from home actually feels good and it works. No going back. Vaccines, that in the past took years to develop, came to be in months, a miracle of science, and ingenuity and government and private cooperation.
But here’s my questions: have we learned anything through all these life changing, and world changing events? Or as COVID fades will we go back to “normal” and not learn anything? That’s what worries me. That as a society and a world and as individuals, we’ll be tempted one day to see COVID as a blip, a big blip, absolutely, but something we’ll fail to redeem in a way, to take some good out of all the bad, to heed some powerful lessons that only something as cataclysmic as COVID can teach.
God knows I’ve changed and am still changing.
Like…COVID has reminded me that love matters more than anything else in all the world. LOVE! That moves us to serve others, to care for the most vulnerable among us: the very old and the very young and the very sick. LOVE! That says this shot is not just for me. I’m getting vaccinated for you too. LOVE! Loving the most important people in my life and them loving me in return: fiercely, loyally, generously, daily.
I’ve learned a lot since this age of COVID began.
I’ve learned that time is the most precious and the most beautiful gift from the creator, but it does not go on forever. When we waste even just one day or one hour or one moment or one second, it is gone, GONE. Forever. Never coming back. No do over. So, with the time I have left, I want to use it up wisely and well and faithfully. Not killing myself through labor and toil to accumulate the most toys, as if that what a “good life” really means. I want to take all my vacation time, not waste one day off. I want to better appreciate the people in my life, especially those older than me, parents and siblings and teachers and mentors who made me, into me. Yes. Call your Mom!
I’ve learned to make more time to just connect with others. Learned that in COVID and in everything, we are all in this together. Learned to give thanks for folks who serve us but whom we might never think of: doctors and nurses, scientists and teachers, clerks, and delivery drivers. I’ve learned that learning and growing is at the heart of the best life. That if I am not learning something new every day, I’m not trying hard enough. That’s what COVID has taught me so far in these before and after times.
And you? What have you learned because of COVID? The Rev. John F. Hudson is senior pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Mass., (pilgrimsherborn.org). If you have a word or idea you’d like defined in a future column or have comments, please send them to pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.