When we forget history. . .

On the radio I heard that there is a movement to establish a national COVID memorial day to remember those who died, those who are living with the lasting effects of the virus, and the pain we bore for this terrible event.  Without in any way minimizing the suffering of people, nations, and our culture due to this pandemic, it is clear that we have forgotten our own history.  When we forget our history, we forget those who suffered far greater than we did for the last few years and, even more so, what it means to suffer at all.  Unlike other pandemics and economic disasters, we survived with prepared food delivered to our doors, with the constant service of USPS, UPS, Prime, and FedEx bringing everything else we wanted to our front porches, with the internet and cable to entertain us, and with online medicine still treating our aches and pains.  Yes, we did endure uncertainty, some shortages of goods and services, and even rationed hospitalizations due to COVID.  But this was not the kind of event where you will tell your grandchildren and great-grandchildren where you were with the world came to an end.  Unless you have forgotten what it means for the world to really come to an end. 

What we lost was, in part, willingly surrendered.  We traded so much in pursuit of personal safety but we traded it willingly.  No one stole our liberty from us or locked us in our homes or shuttered our churches without our consent.  We gladly gave it all up because we thought we were preserving a way of life and even life itself.  Most folks considered it an even trade -- money, freedom, masks, vaccines that cannot quite prevent what they were supposed to stop, in favor of a life insulated from the unknown and risk.  Is that what we will be memorializing?  If we are willing to admit and confess what we did and what we did not do, what we allowed to divide and isolate us, and what we thought was true that turned out to be not quite truth, then maybe we need a memorial day for COVID.  But if we are looking for another memorial day to grill some food and pursue our leisure while lamenting how bad it was and how hard it was on us, I vote no.

Ask my mom and dad and their parents about growing up and living through the depression, trading coupons for scarcities, and working like dogs only to see the crops dry up and the soil blow away.  Ask them about the Spanish Flu and the 50-75 million who died throughout the world.  Ask those who went before them about the Black Death in 1349 that killed about half of all Londoners and between 30% and 60% of all Europeans. Ask about the war dead from the Thirty Years' War or the Napoleonic wars or the Great War or the War to end all wars.  Ask about the millions killed in Chinese conflicts or the many African conflicts.  It is not only the death toll that ought to teach us something but the devastation that followed these great conflicts.  But perhaps we don't want to ask and would rather live with the illusion that our suffering was the worst that humanity ever knew.  It makes for a good story -- even if it is not true.  We live with the lies also because we do not know any better.  With lives so centered on the moment and ourselves, it might be worse than a pandemic to give up our sacred delusions.  

Without minimizing in any way the cost in lives, suffering, and the economy, we survived with less inconvenience than those who went before us and with more resources and choices available to us than those who went before enjoyed in good times.  Every now and then it might do us some good to wake up and smell the roses.  We have grown so accustomed to describing the bad things that happen to us as horrible, the worst ever, and more than we can bear that we have began to believe our own words.  It does not help us in the long run to dote on our feelings and live within our misery.  A healthy sense of history and the sufferings of others and some perspective may be better medicine than anything else.