Month: April 2020

If enough people in a given population are individually protected from a certain infection, everyone benefits. Basically, a microbe cannot circulate in enough hosts if those potential hosts are immune. So the microbe doesn’t circulate, or at least not as much. That’s good for people without any individual protection. The herd shelters them.

Unfortunately, in the early days of COVID-19, none of us has much sanctuary. The herd is actually unsafe. Consequently, we spend a lot of time alone, separated, wary of each other, surfaces we’ve touched, even the air we’ve commonly breathed.

Earlier this week, while hiking in the forest not too far from my house, a very friendly dog bounded toward me. “She likes to lick,” the owner called. I stood still, hands in my pocket. The dog gave me the “Come on, I know you want to pet me” look, then gave up with a shrug when I didn’t reach out and comply.

Antibodies. We all wish we had them. Because antibodies, of the right kind and in sufficient quantities, means personal safety, security. Individual immunity. The chance to pet people’s dogs and not shrink away from dogs’ owners when we are all out in public.

Human immune systems are pretty complex. There are lots of parts and each part has subparts, with those subparts containing layers of componentry. Some cells are fighters. Others are helpers. The further one goes into the study of it all the more technical the names become. Most have numbers, almost as if scientists gave up trying to name everything discovered in a human host designed to stave off external invaders, large and small. Numbers and wordless letters also maintain a certain neutrality; the soldiers within our immune systems can sometimes get hyper-excited and attack native tissue by mistake. “Auto-immunity” is not a fun thing to experience, to which many people who suffer from various illnesses can attest.

Walking in the forest following my recent close encounter with a friendly four-legged standard poodle, it occurred to me that there may be more to the concept of “herd immunity” than we’ve envisioned. The public health advantage is clear; non-immune individuals benefit from the immunity of others. But suppose we play roles in the common immunologic landscape other than independent physical forms teeming with internal serologic security staff? Suppose we ourselves are walking and talking parts of the planet’s immune system?

We are more than a species, co-existing on a planet teetering on the edge of disarray. We are a collection of individual constituent pieces. And we each have parts to play.

Some of us are like B and T lymphocytes; we carry broad memories of past assaults on ecosystems and life forms, ready to identify trends and communicate threats. Others are NK or natural killer cells; we serve as emergency responders. There are the cleaners and waste removers (the “lymphaticists”), the filterers and producers (our “bone marrowists”, “thymusists”, and “splenics”), the supporters (our “helper cells”) and then a whole host of specialists: people perhaps like you and me who have targeted abilities to perform key functions in the world, people who think we don’t make much of a difference until a need arises that we are personally and uniquely qualified and able to recognize and address, people who depend on each other for our common survival and who, without the ability to rely on that interdependence, would not individually survive.

We are, many of us, our species’ – and our world’s – antibodies.

Think about that, the next time you look at someone or some other living creature and you wonder about her or its place on this planet. We got here, to this point in time, together, as a gathering of species and possibilities, not because of our similarities but instead because of our differences. Sometimes we hurt each other; sadly, we have a proclivity for auto-immunity at a macroscopic level. Most of the time, however, we help and support each other at the micro level, in the small things we say and do, in the myriad of things that we sometimes refrain from saying and doing.

I regret that I did not feel safe to reach out and pet that poodle the other day. But the dog didn’t seem worried. It bounded off beyond me, secure in the awareness that there was a greeting still to come further down the trail. Somehow, it knew what my COVID-19 confounded consciousness caused me to forget: we are a herd.

Winter Carnival, 1978. I was a freshman in college and everyone was going skiing. Now I hadn’t grow up around snow – at least not snow present on the ground during most of winter, not snow that piled in drifts on mountains, not snow that people skied on. In fact, I had only skied once before and that was on a hill that a person could sled down almost as fast as ski.

My lack of experience, however, did not matter. The guys in my dorm were heading out to the local ski area and they asked me to come along. So I bought a very used pair of boots and skis, tucked my legs inside long underwear and old pair of jeans, and unpacked a hat that was uglier than it was bright.

I was not the only inexperienced skier in the group. There was Spider, my roommate; he hailed from the west coast. And there was Robert. An Australian, Robert had been hitchhiking along the east coast and, based on a series of random rides, had found his way to our dorm and some vacant floor space for his sleeping bag.

Apparently, the conditions were not very good; many of the runs had exposed ice. “Not much powda,” Robert noted to one of my friends. “Those skis are pretty long,” he added. The measurement comment was intended for me. My battered skis reached well over my head.

“Fifty bucks,” I smiled. I shook a black boot at him. “And that included the boots.”

“Do they fit?” someone asked. I shrugged. “Fifty bucks,” someone else answered for me.

With that we clambered aboard the chair lift. If you’ve ever learned to ski, you know that getting on and off the chair lift can be the most treacherous part of the experience, especially with skis that are too long and with toes that have no feeling. No worries, however. I figured it out, mostly by just jumping into place like some frog without much spring in its legs. Spider wasn’t so fortunate. He managed to fall pretty much every time the chair came swinging into place behind him.

Once atop the first run, the guys who had convinced me to spend fifty bucks on old equipment did not feel compelled to help me figure out how to use it. They raced each other down the hill as if they had skied as long as they’d walked. I also discovered that Australia wasn’t an entirely flat continent; for the most part, Robert seemed to have no trouble keeping up with the others. Before I could wipe the fog off my sun glasses, everyone but Spider was gone. And Spider made me look like I was a pro. While he navigated side to side, advancing downward what seemed to be only a matter of yards each time, I pointed the tips of my extra long skis straight down the hill. When it seemed like I was going faster than I should, I slammed on the brakes in a jump stop, the way I had seen some others do it on the chair ride up. Surprisingly, the technique worked. My confidence was bolstered. “Come on, Spider,” I hollered. “I’ll meet you down there.”

“Down there” was a mid-way section of the hill, one to two hundred yards ahead. Gathering momentum, I spotted a few of my dorm friends gathered together, leaning on their poles. I decided to show off my newfound ability to make an efficient ski stop. :Leave me behind?” I thought. “Well, here comes some powder for you.”

You can get going pretty fast on skis, if you aren’t careful. The speed can cause a novice to misjudge stopping distance. First they were there, pretty far away. Then they were closer, not so far. Yep, those were my dorm mates and, with them, Robert. There was also someone else – girl from California named Muffin. I had never met Muffin. She was beautiful. So were her skis, the ones that I went sliding over at a fairly good clip when the ice that wasn’t powder prevented me from stopping. There was the scraping sound of skis on ice, the realization that I was not going to stop in time but was instead going to pass right through the group, and the look of, well, fear-become-distain that Muffin gave the guy in jeans, fogged sunglasses, and old brown skis who had just sailed across the tails of her pink and yellow skis.

I kept going – once I picked myself up as if I had done exactly what I’d planned to do. It was Robert and Freddy K who followed me. I beat them to the chair lift, and quickly jumped onto an open chair. They managed to almost catch me, getting on the lift a few chairs behind.

That was pretty stupid, I told myself. Well at least I didn’t hit anyone.

Just then another friend hollered as he skied the moguls beneath the chair lift. I looked down to see him lose his balance, lean forward, and flip in the air, landing on his skis, as if it was planned. He continued on, his cheer echoing across the mountain side. And that’s when Robert called out to me, from a few chairs back.

“Hey Mark!” I heard him say, in his distinctively Aussie accent. “You really impressed her with that one, Mark!”

A minute later, he reminded me again of my spectacular feat. “Mark, really impressed her for sure!”

Somewhere behind me, the two of them were laughing hysterically. I was about to turn and say something in a very adolescent male 1970s genre, regardless of who was sitting in the chairs between us, when I heard my name called from a different direction. It was Spider. My roommate had not progressed very far from where I had left him. But he had figured out something important: how to turn. He was still going side to side, from one edge of the run to the other. Except now, each time he successfully got to a tree line and managed to reverse his direction, he let out a loud whoop. Those were real whoops of joy.

It’s strange how a memory can linger. I’ve lived a lot of years since that cold winter day in 1978. And, once or twice during that time, I’ve skied better (although not very much better). Yet despite the decades, I can still hear Robert’s accented call to me up the mountain side, and Spider’s series of whoops to the world, as if it was yesterday. He was a kind person, the traveling Australian; he clearly identified with my discomfort. And Spider may have only completed one run down the hill the entire afternoon. But both had lifelong messages for me that wonderful solitary chairlift ride, a set of hollers and calls which, regardless of the circumstances, were so full of resonance – and so free of time:

1. Don’t try to impress, especially if you aren’t ready.
2. Grow into skills, instead of strapping them on.
3. A girl named Muffin will never talk with you if you gouge the ends of her skis while trying to show off for your friends.
4. Punctuate the turns of life with loud and hearty whoops.

My life has not had a rubicon, a singular moment when who-I-was fell past and who-I-am became forever present.

I’ve thought it has; if asked, my instinct would have been to tell you, before this morning, that, yes, there has been – there must have been – such a precise time or experience in my 22,212 days of being, that I am sure I have crossed a particular biographical then-to-here bridge from which I have never returned. Upon reflection, however, I know that I can identify no solitary and unique transition or point of personal pivot. Without much effort, I can think of many days that have served as critical cruxes in the trajectory of this thing I call my life.

Take today, for example. Easter. The fourth day of Passover in the year 2020. The second Sunday of April during the pandemic named COVID-19. A quiet morning in northern Arizona when the birds announce the arrival of spring despite the unseasonal temperature.

They sound so confident, the birds do. The thermometer reads 40 degrees Fahrenheit and yet the birds sing as if it is seventy. They don’t wear winter jackets or extra layers of clothing. The feathered friends rise with the daylight, they bound from tree to ground to tree, they chatter as if everything is normal. And although I cannot speak their language, I can recognize their refrain. It is a time, they are babbling. It is spring. It is a new day.

Wake up!

“Yes,” I reply, “yes, yes, I am awake.”

Except I am not awake, not really. I am not awake because I begin today with the weight from yesterday. My feet touch the floor with the painful reminder of pandemic. My eyes are blinded by the memory of suffering, of uncertainty. I barely hear the swallows’ song because of the inertia of expectation.

Wake up! the wrens holler. Arise! the robins persist.

Sure, the morning ballads are not necessarily for me. They are for mates, for their flock, their fleet, their throng. They are not all arias of joy. There are messages being shared in the jabbering and clattering. There is avian communication. What do the birds know about human happiness and tragedy? They don’t exist to make me smile, aren’t interested in whether I stay in bed or step outside to enjoy their choral concert. They are programmed to engage in the annual ritual of renewal: spring. They are only concerned about one thing: this morning. Today.

The birds know nothing but the importance of experiencing rebirth.

And therein, of course, lies the meaning within their melody.

When I do well, when I live the moments of my days with an awareness of my place, my positioning in space, the potential for me, little-old-simple-me, to make a difference for you, you-who-I-don’t-always-understand-or-know-how-to-help-and-feel-connected-to, when I stop worrying and wondering if I’ve learned the right morales and messages from my years on this planet, when I realize that religion, rites of the seasons, remembrances of real or confabulated rubicons in the arc of my passage in this form called the human body, when I stop thinking and do more being – that’s when I feel the presence of God, that’s when I enjoy the morning song of spring, that’s when I experience the essence of life, of love, and of simple, subtle, and sweet goodliness.

The warbler’s song has always been for me. Just as my song has always been for you.

Let us listen together. Let us sing as one.

There is no doubt: a pandemic is scary. And serious. Deadly. And dehumanizing. It is one thing to watch a pandemic on the news. It is another to experience it in your own community.

In recent weeks, much of the world has encountered the novel coronavirus named COVID-19, up close and all too personal. People are dying. Families and communities are suffering. We are not used to this. Sure, if you live long enough, you learn that life is not to be taken for granted, that somebody you know or love who is with us one day is sometimes not with us the next. Loss happens, yes. But not at the frequency that is happening now.

This virus moves swiftly. It takes people quickly. And we catch it from each other.

I was hiking in the forest the other day and a jogger passed me from the opposite direction. We both moved off the path, to different sides. Social distancing was rapidly and successfully navigated in the middle of state trust land. Still, I felt as if I should cover my face when he approached me. I mean I was walking and the other guy was running. Plus he was breathing harder than I was. Was six feet enough distance to safely avoid something aerosolized if he spontaneously coughed when we passed?

He didn’t cough. And I didn’t cover my mouth. Instead, I forced myself to remember who I was and who I aspired to be. So I stopped, smiled, and lifted my hand, not toward my mouth and nose but instead in shape of hello. I said hi to the guy, with my open hand. I waved. He nodded.

Within seconds, the moment was gone. We continued on our separate ways. I can’t say how that runner felt but I personally felt better because we had acknowledged each other. We had remained human. There had been a moment, however slight, of recognition. Of acknowledgement. We had not succumbed to fear. Instead, we had offered a gesture of good will.

Of kindness.

What is the average number of people that one person with COVID-19 can infect? I bet you know the answer. Perhaps you also know the average incubation period from virus exposure to symptoms for people colonized or infected with COVID-19 who become sick. You may even know the estimated percentage of people who do not actually become sick despite being “infected”.

But did you know that there is something out there among us right now, something far more contagious than coronavirus, something with an almost instantaneous incubation period, something that can infect and spread among people and populations almost like a wave of thunder or a bolt of lightning?

There is. It’s called kindness.

Think about it. You can look at a person and smile, even with your eyes, and despite the fact that both you and other person are wearing masks, you can see the spontaneous smile reciprocated in that other person’s eyes. The transmission time is almost unmeasurable. And that person – and you as well – can then transmit the same smile and feeling of connection to the next person, and the next, until, before a virus can replicate even once, a ripple of humanity can spread across an entire corner of a community.

Guess what else kindness can do? It can bridge space, and “social distancing”, and email, and even time. Some friends occasionally leave fresh bread on my doorstep. They don’t ring the bell. They don’t stop to say hi. They don’t even wave.

They just leave the bread and text my wife or me that it is there. We see the text. We open the door. There is “no one” there. There is only bread. But there is so so much more. There is thoughtfulness. There is generosity. There is humanity.

There is kindness.

Based on his experience in a concentration camp during World War II, Victor Frankl wrote about the “last of the human freedoms”: to choose one’s attitude.

What attitude do you choose? What attitude might we all remind ourselves to choose during one of the most frightening times in modern history?

Let’s try to choose kindness. And let’s try to spread it as fast and as far as possible.