We Lived Happily During the War
Ilya Kaminsky
And when they bombed other
people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them
but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by
invisible house by invisible house.
I took a chair outside and
watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the
house of money
in the street of money in the
city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we
(forgive us)
lived happily during the war.
How often have you heard or thought lately, “When things get back to normal…”? Sometimes the phrase is said out of fear, because reality is joltingly frightening right now. Sometimes it is said out of longing, an aching desire to return to life as we knew it. And, sometimes it is said to appease the masses as the days of the pandemic crackdown drag on and on with no clear end of suffering in sight. The desire to return to things keenly known and intimately comfortable is inherently human.
Think of grandparents who idealize the world they grew up in.
The aunt or uncle who still pinches your cheeks and exclaims they can’t believe
how you’ve grown, because they still imagine you to be 12 years old with braces
and ponytails even though you moved on from your pediatrician’s office over a
decade ago. Or, the graduates who return year after year to their college’s
alumni events to visit the houses and bars and libraries and lecture halls. Memories
are cherished, and change, the letting go to make room for something new, is
fundamentally difficult. Yet, change comes whether we like it or not, and we
can choose to be part of the direction of change or sit by the sidelines
embittered or oblivious.
No matter – “normal” is never returning and much is being
written about this period of mourning. We are certainly experiencing grief and
rightly so. However, we have to remember that just as the loved one we lost
will never return, life as we know it isn’t going to return either. I know this
brings paralyzing sadness, terrible hardship and inexplicable loss to so many –
all the deaths and divisions and failings of our institutions are being laid out
for all to see in exhausting detail and overwhelming magnitude. Thankfully, stories
of kindness and optimism find their way through, too, as technology manages to undermine
and enrich at the very same time. Grief and gratitude inextricably intertwined.
I am looking forward to the “new normal:” the “society can
do it better normal;” the “every person is worthy and valuable normal;” the “let’s
take this opportunity to envision and strive for a healthier, holistic normal.”
We won’t get it right, but we can learn as Samuel Beckett so aptly said, “Try
again. Fail again. Fail better.” In my mind, any other response will be a moral
failing, according to the values that guide my life. The lives lost to the
carnage COVID-19 leaves in its wake demand it.
I sit in privilege in this “house of money” as Ilya Kaminsky
so eloquently wrote, and I think we need to recognize that those who are currently
setting up the false dichotomy that it is either the economy or a “few lives
lost” might be revealing that capitalism has become the deepest belief system on
which this country currently stands not the Christian faith nor the
Constitution. Don’t misconstrue – I understand that the well being of the people
depends on a healthy economy but just as a parent is only as happy as their
least well child, so must we as a nation know that we are only as “great” as
the least among us.
Now that the invisible has been made painfully visible, let’s
begin to envision a vastly different future. Maybe, the “new normal” should be
exceptional, groundbreaking, cutting-edge, revolutionary, trailblazing, trendsetting.
Let’s think boldly on both a societal level as well as a personal level. Let’s
open our hearts in new ways, challenge our minds to engage in new thinking, set
our bodies to new work until completely exhausted and relish the deeply satisfying
and renewing sleep that only a spent person doing good work
knows. On this new path, the work will be hard; the rewards more than worthwhile.
“I ask God to be relieved of the bondage of self so that I
may better serve others.”
David Van De Carr, “How a Respiratory Therapist, Working ‘Code
to Code,’
Spends His Sundays." NYT 4/19/2020
