We’re living through a crisis.
It’s okay to feel anxious. The uncertainty of how we’ll pull through this is a crappy combo bizzare and distressing.
COVID-19 spreads like wildfire, and we’re forced to shutter our businesses and homes in response.
You’re not alone in stressing about missing family, being away from school, disconnected from church. Humans need community, and this is not how people are meant to live. This whole social distancing thing is no joke.
Access to the world and it’s news is never more than a tap away & it’s necessary to be informed of global concerns and local precautions.
But the constant updates of numbers about those infected, graphs of predictions predictions, and flat-out bad news is mentally and emotionally draining.
Discouraging doesn’t quite cover it.
I’m sure you’ve noticed, the news has ya going from bummed to devastated, nervous to fearful, and kinda unsure to completely insecure.
However.
We have to keep living.
This virus of fear is not new.
The wars and plagues that spread the fear are not new either.
Pandemic is foreign to you and me, since most of us have never been directly affected by something so great and out of control.
We have to learn to live through it.
The atomic age brought about similar panic to people, especially in London. CS Lewis, as per usual, had some wisdom to share about how we can respond to it.
(Fun fact: my son’s middle name is Clive, after C.S. Lewis. I’m a big fan of his.)
I’ve seen A LOT of people sharing a quote from Lewis’ essay, and a surprising amount of people dismissing the advice, with the reason being the specific advice mentioned doesn’t apply to pandemic.
I think it perfectly describes the mental state of the world right now, considering our problem isn’t new by any means.
So I’m offering my own translation to the essay, from the perspective of a millennial mama, surviving in the time of a health emergency. Here goes.
Translation, as it applies to pandemic
Lewis:
“In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?”
I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night;
— “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays
or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
COVID-19 version:
We’re putting a lot of, if not too much, focus on coronavirus.
“How the hell are we supposed to live in a pandemic?!” It’s tempting to say, ‘well, the same way we would’ve lived through Viking attacks, plagues, or war coming closer to home than we’re used to;
OR, as we’re already living- in times of school shootings, terrorism, environmental devastation, economic recession, car accidents and cancer.
Lewis:
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation.
Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways.
We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still.
It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
C.S. Lewis — “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays
COVID-19 version:
AKA, let’s not exaggerate by saying the COVID-19 pandemic is entirely new.
I hate to say it, but we’re already doomed to die eventually, even before coronavirus showed up.
& unfortunately, some of us are going to die in really terrible ways, regardless.
We do have it better than they did ‘back in the day’– modern medical technologies/___, still got that.
It’s absurd to be wringing your hands and sharing doom-and-gloom think pieces & news on social media
because there’s one more chance at an awful/early death in a world that’s already full of those chances- & where death is 100% for sure anyway.
Lewis:
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together.
C.S. Lewis — “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays
If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music,
bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
COVID-19 version:
Here’s the point, y’all.
Get it together.
If we’re going to die from coronavirus no matter how hard we try to avoid it,
let it find us still living our lives as fully as we can- praying,
telecommuting, teaching over Zoom, reading,
watching live living room concerts from cool bands,
still celebrating birthdays, holidays, graduations,
virtually hanging out in Facebook/Netflix watch parties,
or still getting out for exercise like a bike ride, walking outside, feeling the sun, if you can
–NOT hiding in your house, paranoid about getting coronavirus.
This virus could kill you,
BUT it does not need to dominate your mind.
We can’t live in fear.
It’s okay to be anxious. Anxiety and panic stems often stems from feeling out of control of a situation, and this is about as out of control as it gets.
We cannot let the fear consume us and forget to live.
In all the preparing for the worst, let’s not forget to hope for the best.