Staring Down Darkness Into Light
It feels like it’s pitch black darkness but we know that we are not in pitch black darkness yet. We may think that this is what pitch black darkness feels like. It’s not. We may even hold our hand out in front of our face and wiggle our fingers. “Look! I can’t see them moving! There’s no light in here!” And we might be right. We may not be able to see our fingers move but there can be less light. And in the coming days, weeks and possibly months, there will be less light. A lot less light. We will look back on days like today and marvel at how small our pupils were and how easy it was to see.
When I let my guard down I like to play a game with myself that I always win. In the game I look back at the timeline of my life that got me to here and I selectively pick out good points. I don’t think I’m the only person that does this. These good points can take on many forms. We all have different ones. Here are a few of mine: a sunset basketball game in a city you’re about to move away from; a balcony dinner with friends in Berlin at the end of one of the longest days of the year; a first kiss; a parting hug; watching the sunrise on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial after working through the night to strike the last musical of my high school career.
I play this game and I torture myself. I pick out these moments and then I go a little further back. I push a little harder. I go back a few days. Or even a few hours and I look at that Scott Goodin and I feel jealousy and hatred and pity. I am jealous of that Scott Goodin because he is about to experience something that will define his life and that he will also remember for the rest of it. I hate that Scott Goodin because I would love to experience what he is about to experience. And I pity him because he is so hopelessly unaware of the riches that are about to come his direction. Because that Scott Goodin is much like the Scott Goodin that is writing this: he is scared; he is anxious; he believes that everything good that could happen to him has already done so and so he looks to a colorless future and despairs.
Clearly the threat that this flavor of darkness, COVID-19, poses a massive threat to both us as individuals and our society. I do not wish to diminish that nor do I wish to tell anyone who has already or is going to lose their job or a loved one that they should try and find the silver lining in their situation by learning a life lesson. Sometimes there is no silver lining to be found and sometimes there is nothing to learn.
But one day we will come out of the darkness. Or at the very least we will start to see again. (Most of us, we are told.) And unless the experience does the unthinkable and completely overhauls the way that I think, I am pretty sure that I will flash to mid-March 2020 Scott Goodin and I will feel many conflicting things. I will pity him because, while he might rightfully expect despair, suffering, and pain he will not be ready for their specific flavor, duration or intensity. I will be jealous of him because, while he might expect some sort of personal growth or revelation (he’s read enough self-help books after all) as a result of the all of the darkness, he cannot see how he will actually grow or know what may be revealed to him. And I will hate him because there are things about his safe, opulent, comfortable world that will change and will never be the same again.
On the day that (most of us) emerge from this darkness, we will know the outcome. We will know the extent of economic suffering. We will know the body count. I may have lost my job. I may have lost people that I love. And eventually knowing these things will feel like reading a movie’s plot summary on its Wikipedia page. Suffering will be reduced to statistics and deaths will be tabulated for the history books. I hope that this will be historic because I hope that it will never happen again.
What I am trying to say is that this moment matters so let us try and be here for it. Let us turn off the music and listen to how quiet it is outside. And when cabin fever sets in, let us notice how claustrophobic we feel. And while outside, let us notice how the empty basketball courts, swing sets and jungle gyms give us a sense of unease. Of disease. Let us notice that even as spring, traditionally the season of rebirth, comes upon us, it feels more like we are actually preparing to die. And let us die before we die. Let us use this opportunity to learn to pay less attention to our egos and more attention to the things that actually matter.
And if it turns out that there is something to learn, maybe one day we will look and we will see through the darkness and we will feel love.