What the Pandemic Has Taught Me
What the Pandemic Has Taught Me
Richard Zimler
Back in June of 2020, after spending a couple of months in quarantine and worrying about the consequences of Covid-19 for me, my family and all of Portugal and the world, I wrote a brief essay about what I had learned from the pandemic.
I’d like to read this text and then talk further about what the pandemic and our reaction to it has taught me.
*****
I wrote a haiku yesterday for the first time in two years:
Eyes are moistened by
The whiteness of gravity.
Snowflakes in April.
At first, I thought this poem had nothing to do with the Covid-19 pandemic that we are all facing, but now I know different.
First, let me say that for me – like most of you, I imagine – each passing day is much like the previous one. Very little stands out. In my case, I don’t visit any schools to talk about my writing or travel anywhere. I don’t do any interviews. Nothing “big” happens to me. What I've come to value are tiny events like baking a new batch of oatmeal-raisin cookies or finishing a hat that I have been crocheting for a friend’s baby or listening to my husband Alex read me an article he is writing for a literary magazine in Portugal, where we live.
Or writing a haiku.
And here’s something new: it no longer matters whether the haiku is any good. Its “worth” is of no importance to me at the moment – which gives me the wondrous feeling of having escaped a trap that was set for me (or that I set for myself!) twenty-five years ago, when I started publishing novels.
I rarely try to “explain” what I’ve written – to say what it “means” – because I believe that it’s best for readers to come up with their own interpretations. But I want to make an exception at this exceptional time.
From my perspective, my haiku has to do with the pandemic because it is about appreciating seemingly unimportant things like snowflakes. If we are able to do that, we may find our “eyes moistened.” Why? Out of gratitude for the beauty of the world, of course. For being alive. For being well. And for those of us who aren’t alone at this difficult time, for being with those we love (including our pets!)
The haiku is also about linking very personal discoveries – like the joy of watching snowflakes falling – to something bigger, in this case, gravity. I did my best to find a surprising and unique way to say that in order to awaken the reader with a jolt: “The whiteness of gravity”.
To me, the second and third line of the haiku are an accurate representation of what this health crisis has taught many of us (or reminded us): that small and intimate things are connected to much bigger and important situations. For instance, those of us who stay at home and spend our days involved in little activities like baking and knitting are helping to keep our neighbors safe. And by extension, helping to keep safe everyone who isn’t already infected.
I am very glad that insignificant activities characterize my current life. Because they are calming. They require little or no intellectual effort. And, as I say, I don’t care whether the results are any good. Also, they seem timeless – to connect me to everyone who has ever lived. After all, human beings have been making hats and baking cookies for thousands of years.
Being in quarantine has also made it clear me that writing is fundamentally different – slower and more gentle – than playing a video game or driving our car or sending messages on our phone. Not that I find anything wrong with those other activities. Any way that we can get through this crisis without hurting others or driving ourselves insane seems like a good solution to me.
But I think that focusing on what is small and quiet – and therefore overlooked during normal times – has an advantage; it may keep us from panicking.
I have a lot of experience with this because I panicked all the time during the last pandemic, of Aids, back in the 1980s and 1990s. You probably think you wash your hands a lot now. I know I do. But in the late 1980s, after visiting my dying brother in the hospital, I used to wash my hands up to 100 times a day. Because watching him die destroyed nearly all my faith in the world and convinced me that every person and object I touched might infect me with a fatal disease – if not Aids, then one of the drug-resistant bacteria that reside in hospitals.
Unfortunately, the language of panic has been adopted by our media and our worst, most incompetent leaders. They speak of the “war” against the virus and characterize nurses and doctors as “battling on the front lines” and patients as “winning” or “losing” their fight against this illness.
Are they aware that they are terrifying many of us? Unfortunately, I don’t think that most leaders and journalists analyze the language they use. And so they have no idea that a dangerous lie crouches behind their metaphors of war: that we will end the pandemic by crushing it through sheer force.
No, sheer force isn’t going to do any good. Scientists and researchers will bring an end to this crisis by finding useful drugs and – later – a vaccine. Meanwhile, intelligent government officials will reduce the scale of the pandemic by investing in all the infrastructure and hospital equipment needed to deal efficiently with this extra burden. And doctors and nurses will help not just by saving lives but also by reminding us that they care about our well-being – that they will do all they can to help those of us who may become ill over the next weeks and months.
The fact that there are people who don’t know us but who care deeply about whether we live or die is a great testament to the inherent nobility of human beings. It’s very likely what we need to keep remembering in order to try to stay calm.
The extraordinary work of our doctors and nurses makes leaders like Trump and Bolsonaro seem ever more irresponsible, selfish and juvenile. In part because they clearly understand nothing about the nobility of which human beings are capable. They have no idea that other people can act nobly precisely because they themselves are unable to do so.
You cannot see in others what is completely lacking in yourself, of course.
And so, you and I will halt the spread of this disease by staying home and re-learning to value what is tiny and mostly useful only to ourselves – by bathing our kids and walking our dog and choosing books to order. By not panicking.
In one of my novels, The Warsaw Anagrams, the narrator says that his definition of heaven is of a place where the most soft-spoken people win all the arguments.
I realize now – and it’s a big surprise – that that is the world I’m currently living in. So maybe that’s the challenge that this terrible health crisis poses to all of us: to make our homes into own small and quiet version of paradise.
*****
After publishing this text in Portugal and America, the first lesson I learned was that I would very often fail to turn my house into a small and tranquil version of paradise. Indeed, I experienced a great many hours and days when, like many of us, I feared I would get ill and have to go to the hospital. And might even die. Or that my husband Alexandre would. I pictured how impossibly hard it would be to say goodbye to the person I love and with whom I’ve lived for 42 years. But my biggest fear of all was not being able to see him and hold his hand and say goodbye in the hospital if one of us was dying.
And so, slowly, over the course of the next months, I also learned to demand so much of myself. To accept that I was sometimes going to fail to achieve the goals I set for myself.
As a result, I changed my work habits. Before the pandemic, over the course of 25 years, I would write all morning, when I was most alert. During our confinement, however, I began to spend my mornings watching television, listening to music and reading. I needed several hours that were completely without any intellectual or emotional stress. I began writing only after lunch. And sometimes I did no work at all.
It’s curious how the human mind functions – how we ruin our own good days... Back in April of last year, I discovered that when I was having particularly tranquil day, I would often spoil it by thinking: This is all going to vanish one day. And maybe sooner than later. Because Covid-19 taught anyone who has been paying attention that there are no guarantees. 17,000 people have died in Portugal and 600,000 in the USA, the two countries I’ve lived in. These people were just like us. They had dreams they still hoped to fulfill, as well as books they wanted to read, vacations they intended to take.... And then, in an instant, all those desires and plans vanished. For those they left behind, what took the place of their loved one was a hollow space in their exact size and shape. With their face. And their voice.
Americans often say, “What happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas,” because visitors often exaggerate in their drinking and drug-taking and sexual adventures while there and would not wish anyone back home to find out. But we have all learned that pathogens like the new coronavirus do not stay in Las Vegas. Or Wuhan. Or anywhere else. When it comes to a pandemic, New York and Lisbon are just around the corner from Beijing and Nairobi. So we had better abandon or highly modify the unjust and dated neo-Liberal model, which creates such a huge gap between rich and poor that billions of people in Africa, India and many other places cannot get adequate health care. For the sake of our well-being, we need to create a great deal more economic balance and make sure that everyone has access to vaccines and medications. Not just because that is the ethical thing to do. But because it is the only intelligent and long-term solution we have.
Soon after the pandemic put us all in confinement in Portugal, I discovered something that I probably wish I hadn’t learned – that although the great majority of people want to protect their friends and family and other citizens, a significant minority do not. The most important civil right for them is not the freedom of speech or freedom of religion or the right to have equal access to education, employment and marriage. They don’t care about such matters. I am certain of that because I know two people who refuse to get vaccinated and who refused to wear a mask or maintain distancing even when meeting with people outside their families. They have never fought for any civil right in their life except for the right not to protect other people. As well as the right insult anyone who does. Like you, perhaps, I received a great many insults on Facebook and other social media for praising those of us who protect others by wearing masks and maintaining social distancing. For praising doctors and nurses. And for publicly thanking the administrators at the Portuguese National Health Service for doing their best to make sound health policies. For praising those who believe in science and medicine – who believe in the usefulness of knowledge.
Keep in mind that every person who died from Covid-19 – nearly 4 million at present –caught the disease from another person.
That may seem obvious to you, but we have all learned over the past year that a significant percentage of people don’t understand science. And don’t want to. I would even say that we have never lived in an age when so many people are proud to be ignorant. And quite happy to spread the conspiracy theories that are currently the greatest threat to our democracies. I learned that by listening to those who voted for Trump and Bolsonaro. Many of them clearly have no idea what a virus is and don’t want to know. Indeed, millions throughout the world happily spread the lie that the Covid-19 virus doesn’t exist or is just a minor flu-like disease. So let me repeat: Everyone who caught Covid-19 got it from someone who coughed or sneezed or transmitted the virus in some other mostly preventable way.
Early on, I decided that I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone else’s death. Even accidentally. And so I always wore a mask indoors and outdoors whenever I was anywhere near other people and always maintained social distancing. This seems completely rational to me.
Why would I ever risk killing someone else? And why would I risk ruining my own life by giving the disease to my husband or someone else I love. Or even to a stranger. And why would I want to make the work of doctors and nurses more difficult? That makes no sense to me. And never will.
I truly do not understand anyone who thinks differently. It is a mystery to me. And it is a level of selfishness that I would prefer not to know about.
Maybe you, too, would rather not know about it. But we must face it directly so that we can fight against it.
A brief story. At the height of the pandemic, when 15,000 people were testing positive per day in Portugal, I saw a young couple wheeling their baby along the Avenida da Roma in Lisbon. They had a daughter with them, as well. She appeared to be about seven years old. A great many people were walking near them. But no one in the family wore a mask. And at one point, the man cleared his throat and spit on the ground.
I mention this because of the symbolic message that he and his wife were giving their daughter and everyone else on the street: Quite simply, it was this: “We don’t give a damn about you. We are the only people who count. We don’t even see you as real. And we want our kids to also pretend that you don’t exist.”
I tell you this: Beware of any man or woman who doesn’t see other people as real. It is a very dangerous mental disorder.
Another brief story.... I ran into my pharmacist in Porto a month ago and asked if he had already been vaccinated. He replied, “Oh, no, I’m not going to get vaccinated.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because I’m in great shape, I work out at the gym. I’m not going to get ill.”
I decided at that moment that I’d never speak to him again. Not just because he didn’t seem to understand that even if he doesn’t show any symptoms, he could spread the disease to his daughter or wife or me or anyone else. But also because he is implying that people die of Covid-19 because they aren’t in good shape and don’t work out at a gym. So the 400,000 people in India who have died, many for lack of oxygen and basic medicines, only have themselves to blame. As well as all those people in Brazil and Peru who died because there were no hospital beds for them.
You die, it’s your fault. That’s what the pharmacist was telling me. Because you should’ve worked out at a gym three days a week like me!
This implies such a profound contempt of people who live in countries that are poorer than Portugal and such an ignorance of science that I wouldn’t know how to begin a conversation with him. So I didn’t even try. And I never will.
Which is another thing I learned: it’s not worth discussing health policy with people who have contempt for science.
We need to protect ourselves from them – psychologically, physically and morally.
And like me, you probably learned that we need to create health care policies that protect us from them. Because they aren’t going away – especially now that they have political parties who represent them – like the Republicans in America and Chega in Portugal.
I also learned that I had to stop thinking about them or I would become too panicked or depressed. And to refrain from reading every day about Covid-19. I needed to sit by myself and write my novels and crochet my scarves and cook dinner.
In so doing, I discovered that I had a great advantage over most people. Because I have spent the last 25 years of my life largely in isolation. I sit at my computer and write my novels 4 to 10 hours a day. I can easily spend entire weeks where I don’t see anyone but my husband and some shopkeepers. I like it. In part, because when I’m with my characters in 16th-Century Lisbon or the Warsaw ghetto or the Holy Land 2000 years ago, I am home. The lives of my characters are an important part of the tranquil little paradise I referred to at the beginning of my talk.
I’ve always been grateful for doing work that fulfills me. But now, after the last 15 months, I know how profoundly fortunate I am.
I am grateful every day for living with Alexandre and having good friends and being able to make a living by writing my novels.
These days, so many people spend their lives complaining and insulting and quarreling... If you listen to them, you would conclude that nothing good ever happens in Portugal or anywhere else.
But shouldn’t we take the time to praise and offer our thanks and say how much we appreciate the beautiful springtime? How much we appreciate being alive? My personal opinion is that doing so will help us achieve a sense of community and recover from this devastating pandemic.
So, thank you for inviting me. I am grateful to be here with you this afternoon. In fact, given what we’ve all been through, I’m grateful to be anywhere at all!
Stay strong and sane and safe.
Thank you.