9/20/20

By Josh Rubin

We do some mental maneuvering to keep our balance. It is not easy to have perspective on the times we are now living through. No one I know was alive during the flu pandemic or the Black Plague. Nobody to advise us how to emotionally navigate these waters. And for those of us, many in this group, we have had our eyes on the borders that defend the unequal share of the world’s wealth, and have seen for ourselves the eyes of those who wait on the other side, or in camps that imprison, eyes that haunt us even when ours close for the night, at the end of long days of bombardment with the horror of the present.

To protect our hearts from shock, we expect the worst in these worst of times, and we get what we expect. Some can find in history other episodes that rise to this level of disaster, and comfort in that humanity has survived those times. Like those from apocalyptic religions who find the promise of redemption in the rolling thunder of end times, some of us, more secular, see the possibility that the stark injustice, thrown into high relief, that we now witness, will cause humanity to recoil and change its course, and that will be our balm, come at last.

I cannot hold onto that hope for long; it is not in my nature, alas. So, on my best days I keep my head down and, with those haunting eyes of need somewhere drifting in my own eyes like floaters, or perhaps North Stars, I find a way to do what little I do. It is hard now. I am old and co-morbid enough for the virus to kill me, and my family wouldn’t like me to die right now.

And sometimes, early in the day at least, I allow myself to imagine that the violent thrashing that tears at any peace we might feel is the flailing of an evil serpent, already dying, whose tail simply does not know that yet.