The Next Shock

The California State University system and Magill University in Montreal have decided that their students will not return to the classroom this fall. All classes will be online. This is a catastrophic decision for these institutions and I am certain that many more will follow. While I have no special connection to either of these great institutions, when I read the news, I almost cried. I had hoped residential schools would find a way to re-open in the fall. Some still may, but many won’t.

The decision to only have online classes is an admission by the leadership teams of these highly respected institutions, that there will be no way to safely bring large groups of people back into dormitories until a vaccine is developed and widely available. Given the disastrous financial and institutional costs, and assuming the intelligence and creativity of these leaders, we can assume that they felt there was no option. No work-around. No radical change in behavior or policy that would have made it safe for them to gather and house their students anytime in the fall.

All institutions of learning are facing this same issue. September is three months away. The President is saying we must get back to business. Many health experts and other leaders are warning of dire consequences if we move back too quickly.

The pandemic has not overwhelmed us yet, but we are caught in an ongoing crisis that is neither yielding to our optimistic projections nor playing out our nightmare scenarios. Things are really bad. More people are out of work than the Great Depression. Whole sectors of the economy are nearly completely shut down with no reasonable expectation of when they will reopen. We’re wearing (or supposed to be wearing) masks every time we leave our houses. We still can’t worship in our churches, go out to eat or hug the people we love.

It could be much worse. We have indeed, for now, flattened the curve of infection. Here in Massachusetts, all the indicators, number of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths are slowly declining. We have avoided the collapse of our health care systems. Through creative and extraordinary efforts, our hospitals and health systems have geared up enough emergency response capacity and the social distancing measures seem to have had a significant impact. This is all good.

But we now find ourselves in an ongoing state of crisis with no easy answers. The leaders I trust are saying that restarting the economy can only happen safely if the indicators continue to decline AND we have widespread testing AND contact tracing capacity to deal with the inevitable new infections that will arise.

This virus is not going away on its own. Social distancing is our new way of life until a vaccine is developed and widely available. People who know about these things say this is possible within a year or two.

A year or two of this! How will we manage? How do we go on as human beings without the balm of the physical proximity we are so reliant on? How do we live with a future that does not include some of the things we value most?

I pose these questions to myself then sit here in my corner chair without knowing how to answer. The cheap plastic analogue clock on the desk next to me ticks away, oblivious to my quandary. The desk itself easily holds my usual clutter of papers, folders, plants and mugs half-filled with undrunk tea. I stare at the screen of my laptop and notice my breath.  Sunlight illumines the leaves of the katsura trees outside my window.

For some reason, Walt Whitman’s words come to my mind:

All truths wait in all things,
They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,
The insignificant is as big to me as any,
(What is less or more than a touch?)
Logic and sermons never convince,
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

For today, they will have to suffice.

Personal Practice: What if there were no future. What if today, this very day, were the last one of your life? It’s a silly exercise, but it might be true and indeed some day it will be true. (I’m reminded of Woody Allen’s joke complaining about the restaurant: The food was terrible….and the portions were so small.) All of this will end and wise teachers have counseled us for millennia that this very life with all its troubles and insoluble problems is precious beyond compare. Don’t miss a moment.