Contemplating the Plague, the plagues, the raining of frogs
Borrowing from Alain de Botton in today's New York Times, who was borrowing from Camus.
Camus knew that when it came to historical progress, to the theory of forward progress and modernity, there is no escape from vulnerability, which is to say, death. "Plague or no plague, there is always, as it were, the plague, if what we mean by that is a susceptibility to sudden death, an event that can render our lives instantaneously meaningless." [We'll return to the idea of death rendering our lives instantaneously meaningless.]
De Botton says this is what Camus meant when he talked about the "absurdity" of life. That recognizing this absurdity should not lead to despair. Instead, the recognition that death comes for each of us (usually uninvited) should lead "to a tragicomic redemption, a softening of the heart, a turning away from judgment and moralizing to joy and gratitude."
This idea of joy and gratitude in the face of death and dying is a second-cousin, once-removed, from the idea that our best selves emerge in a crisis. Look to the helpers, as Mr. Rogers said. Doctors, nurses, hospital cleaners, police and firefighters, anyone working in the food chain, pharmacists, garbage workers, sanitation engineers, the National Guard, the Army, newscasters and camera operators, the list of people whose very line of work dumps them into the category of "essential"--those people all now appear to be selfless in the face of sickness and death. Perhaps some of those essential individuals would prefer to shelter in place, would prefer to be home, windows shuttered, home-schooling their children, walking around the bog with six feet between them and their neighbors. Perhaps the fact that these essential people continue to work is based also in fear, fear of losing a job, fear of losing a paycheck, fear of what it would feel like to disavow a vow. I think while that might be true for some, when I learn of the numbers of retired medical professionals coming out of retirement to throw their lot in with the essential (to name one of a thousand examples), I am chagrined, guilty of projecting, because I am afraid. We will call these people heroic. And if heroics require some selflessness, some swallowing of fear, some ability to continue on when others, not necessarily by choice, are sheltering in place, then we will be right to use the word heroic.
How do we, the non-heroes (whether we chose not to be doctors, and instead we are lawyers, or because we are old, sick, because we are people who worked in bars, restaurants, clothing stores, car washes, because we just gave birth, because we are caring for our dying wives) turn to joy and gratitude? How do we retain the gratitude necessary to prevent us from self-imploding during our time of sheltering in place? How do we learn to accept boredom? How do we learn how to be lonely? How do we make secret underwater passages from our islands? Is the answer Zoom? Is the answer Chime, which is HIPAA-compliant? Is it by writing texts, emails, letters, poems, diatribes against the machine, novels, recipes, on the computer, on our old typewriters (could typewriter ribbon possibly ever be considered an essential good? perhaps in one stage of the disintegration of the Anthropocene, on the way, to paper and pens, then pencils, then charcoal on cave walls? but that's silly, that imagines changes in epochs as simple unravelings backwards, and that can't be right), on paper, in chalk on the walkways of our friends' houses, in the painted white rocks showing up around Carlisle with messages on them? Be happy. You are not alone. Love and peace.
How do we retain joy? In the curl of the infant's finger around our own, in the blossoming of the crocuses, and daffodils, and tulips? In the laughter of our children as they play a trick on us, startling us, disrupting expectations, in the flash of the bluejay winging its way across the low green of the backyard, in the smell of fresh bread in the oven, in the reading of a novel for our online book group which immerses us in another world, spun out of words, for a time, in the time together, this shared time on this earth? My therapist, who has worked extensively in hospice, says that almost everyone, no matter how old, wishes for more time (which is a separate thing from the fear of death). We have a different kind of time knocking at our doors now. How do we settle into it with grace and the centrality of the intersection of love and time at the core of our daily practices?
Which is not to imply choosing gratitude and joy is easy. The day it snowed last week was the day our washing machine broke--just six months past the two-year warranty--and I joked about frogs falling next. And knowing that others have it much harder (and they do) doesn't always help the frustration and exhaustion and anxiety that is swirling around each of our islands. The twins are adorable--laughing at the live feed of the animals from the Cincinnati Zoo. The twins are beyond aggravating--grumbling about boredom, homework, no playdates, no sports. I can't imagine what it would be like to be joyful all the time--maybe that is a failure of my imagination; I suspect it has more to do with the impossibility of knowing joy without knowing grief. I read a story about people sewing masks for medical professionals in the face of the devastating lack of medical supplies. I watch Jimmy Fallon joking around with his children at home. I read a story about a family deciding to bring their ailing father home from the rehab facility which has barred visitors because without his family, his life is empty. My children get daily emails from their teachers, reading books, asking questions, telling the kids how much they miss them. I read about the people in Italy who have died without funerals, sometimes the bodies in place, in their homes. I watch a video of dolphins returning to the waterways in Venice because the water is now clean enough for them. I can't. I must.
Does death render our lives meaningless? I guess yes, strictly speaking, or at least as far as I know. Our life is over, so the existential idea of our life (which implies "in-time"), so the idea of meaning in a life, no longer lived, is absent, I suppose. I don't even like the way those sentences are constructed. They are awkward and convoluted. I don't imagine my life has meaning in any kind of ahistorical sense--I haven't written anything that is a classic, unless life is wiped out on this planet, and all the aliens have is my laptop, which they can access (a la The Handmaid's Tale, sort-of). I can imagine my life has meaning in a cosmic sense, even when it will inevitably end, in a kind of love equation. I believe I will have contributed love to the world, to the cosmos, more so than grief, but maybe the difference will be slight. God will know, if that is how it works. Or the stars. I do know that part of me will live on in the people around me--the good, the bad, the indifferent. That seems qualitatively different from thinking that death renders life meaningless. Isn't it death that makes life--our choices, our decisions, our actions, our time--meaningful? You tell me.
Back to the rain of frogs. Some people are bothered by the punitive nature of the story of the plagues in Egypt. Camus probably disavowed the idea that punishment would come to those who deserved it. For Camus, part of the tragedy of the plague (read death) was that it could be spontaneous, random, unfair, unexpected--tragic, in other words. The idea that God sent ten plagues to Egypt in order to demonstrate his power is complicated by the fact that God also hardened Pharoah's heart to Moses' pleas. The idea that God sent ten plagues to Egypt is complicated by the power inequities between the Pharoah and most Egyptians. This is Old Testament stuff, eye-for-an-eye stuff. We received a children's book about Passover in the mail this week. At the end of the book it suggested getting props for the Seder table--toy frogs, plastic bugs, a cow with a band-aid, cherry kool-aid for blood. I understand the instinct to make light of these plagues because these concepts are serious and scary for all of us, never mind children--this God is not forgiving, at least not in this lifetime. And yet, to ignore the enslavement, the hunger, the sickness and the death that make this story what it is, along with exodus, along with bravery, along with miracles, is to under-read the story.
I imagine this Passover it will be impossible to under-read the story, to bring toy frogs to the table, literally or metaphorically. I don't know what the table will look like--will we Zoom our Passovers in order to reconfigure the size of our islands? I don't know who will be at the table. I don't know what will be served at the table. But I do know that we will be living in exquisite understanding of what the plague means, even if we cannot see all of how we are changed and will be changed. It will be different, but it will be (although let's not rule out spontaneous combustion at this point). I already have my matzo and matzo meal squirreled away (not that there was a run on matzo). I'm not worried that I won't be able to find gratitude and joy the first night. I will be so grateful to be there for another Passover, if that is true, and I cannot wait to hear the youngest children ask the four questions. How is this night different from all other nights, indeed.
Camus knew that when it came to historical progress, to the theory of forward progress and modernity, there is no escape from vulnerability, which is to say, death. "Plague or no plague, there is always, as it were, the plague, if what we mean by that is a susceptibility to sudden death, an event that can render our lives instantaneously meaningless." [We'll return to the idea of death rendering our lives instantaneously meaningless.]
De Botton says this is what Camus meant when he talked about the "absurdity" of life. That recognizing this absurdity should not lead to despair. Instead, the recognition that death comes for each of us (usually uninvited) should lead "to a tragicomic redemption, a softening of the heart, a turning away from judgment and moralizing to joy and gratitude."
This idea of joy and gratitude in the face of death and dying is a second-cousin, once-removed, from the idea that our best selves emerge in a crisis. Look to the helpers, as Mr. Rogers said. Doctors, nurses, hospital cleaners, police and firefighters, anyone working in the food chain, pharmacists, garbage workers, sanitation engineers, the National Guard, the Army, newscasters and camera operators, the list of people whose very line of work dumps them into the category of "essential"--those people all now appear to be selfless in the face of sickness and death. Perhaps some of those essential individuals would prefer to shelter in place, would prefer to be home, windows shuttered, home-schooling their children, walking around the bog with six feet between them and their neighbors. Perhaps the fact that these essential people continue to work is based also in fear, fear of losing a job, fear of losing a paycheck, fear of what it would feel like to disavow a vow. I think while that might be true for some, when I learn of the numbers of retired medical professionals coming out of retirement to throw their lot in with the essential (to name one of a thousand examples), I am chagrined, guilty of projecting, because I am afraid. We will call these people heroic. And if heroics require some selflessness, some swallowing of fear, some ability to continue on when others, not necessarily by choice, are sheltering in place, then we will be right to use the word heroic.
How do we, the non-heroes (whether we chose not to be doctors, and instead we are lawyers, or because we are old, sick, because we are people who worked in bars, restaurants, clothing stores, car washes, because we just gave birth, because we are caring for our dying wives) turn to joy and gratitude? How do we retain the gratitude necessary to prevent us from self-imploding during our time of sheltering in place? How do we learn to accept boredom? How do we learn how to be lonely? How do we make secret underwater passages from our islands? Is the answer Zoom? Is the answer Chime, which is HIPAA-compliant? Is it by writing texts, emails, letters, poems, diatribes against the machine, novels, recipes, on the computer, on our old typewriters (could typewriter ribbon possibly ever be considered an essential good? perhaps in one stage of the disintegration of the Anthropocene, on the way, to paper and pens, then pencils, then charcoal on cave walls? but that's silly, that imagines changes in epochs as simple unravelings backwards, and that can't be right), on paper, in chalk on the walkways of our friends' houses, in the painted white rocks showing up around Carlisle with messages on them? Be happy. You are not alone. Love and peace.
How do we retain joy? In the curl of the infant's finger around our own, in the blossoming of the crocuses, and daffodils, and tulips? In the laughter of our children as they play a trick on us, startling us, disrupting expectations, in the flash of the bluejay winging its way across the low green of the backyard, in the smell of fresh bread in the oven, in the reading of a novel for our online book group which immerses us in another world, spun out of words, for a time, in the time together, this shared time on this earth? My therapist, who has worked extensively in hospice, says that almost everyone, no matter how old, wishes for more time (which is a separate thing from the fear of death). We have a different kind of time knocking at our doors now. How do we settle into it with grace and the centrality of the intersection of love and time at the core of our daily practices?
Which is not to imply choosing gratitude and joy is easy. The day it snowed last week was the day our washing machine broke--just six months past the two-year warranty--and I joked about frogs falling next. And knowing that others have it much harder (and they do) doesn't always help the frustration and exhaustion and anxiety that is swirling around each of our islands. The twins are adorable--laughing at the live feed of the animals from the Cincinnati Zoo. The twins are beyond aggravating--grumbling about boredom, homework, no playdates, no sports. I can't imagine what it would be like to be joyful all the time--maybe that is a failure of my imagination; I suspect it has more to do with the impossibility of knowing joy without knowing grief. I read a story about people sewing masks for medical professionals in the face of the devastating lack of medical supplies. I watch Jimmy Fallon joking around with his children at home. I read a story about a family deciding to bring their ailing father home from the rehab facility which has barred visitors because without his family, his life is empty. My children get daily emails from their teachers, reading books, asking questions, telling the kids how much they miss them. I read about the people in Italy who have died without funerals, sometimes the bodies in place, in their homes. I watch a video of dolphins returning to the waterways in Venice because the water is now clean enough for them. I can't. I must.
Does death render our lives meaningless? I guess yes, strictly speaking, or at least as far as I know. Our life is over, so the existential idea of our life (which implies "in-time"), so the idea of meaning in a life, no longer lived, is absent, I suppose. I don't even like the way those sentences are constructed. They are awkward and convoluted. I don't imagine my life has meaning in any kind of ahistorical sense--I haven't written anything that is a classic, unless life is wiped out on this planet, and all the aliens have is my laptop, which they can access (a la The Handmaid's Tale, sort-of). I can imagine my life has meaning in a cosmic sense, even when it will inevitably end, in a kind of love equation. I believe I will have contributed love to the world, to the cosmos, more so than grief, but maybe the difference will be slight. God will know, if that is how it works. Or the stars. I do know that part of me will live on in the people around me--the good, the bad, the indifferent. That seems qualitatively different from thinking that death renders life meaningless. Isn't it death that makes life--our choices, our decisions, our actions, our time--meaningful? You tell me.
Back to the rain of frogs. Some people are bothered by the punitive nature of the story of the plagues in Egypt. Camus probably disavowed the idea that punishment would come to those who deserved it. For Camus, part of the tragedy of the plague (read death) was that it could be spontaneous, random, unfair, unexpected--tragic, in other words. The idea that God sent ten plagues to Egypt in order to demonstrate his power is complicated by the fact that God also hardened Pharoah's heart to Moses' pleas. The idea that God sent ten plagues to Egypt is complicated by the power inequities between the Pharoah and most Egyptians. This is Old Testament stuff, eye-for-an-eye stuff. We received a children's book about Passover in the mail this week. At the end of the book it suggested getting props for the Seder table--toy frogs, plastic bugs, a cow with a band-aid, cherry kool-aid for blood. I understand the instinct to make light of these plagues because these concepts are serious and scary for all of us, never mind children--this God is not forgiving, at least not in this lifetime. And yet, to ignore the enslavement, the hunger, the sickness and the death that make this story what it is, along with exodus, along with bravery, along with miracles, is to under-read the story.
I imagine this Passover it will be impossible to under-read the story, to bring toy frogs to the table, literally or metaphorically. I don't know what the table will look like--will we Zoom our Passovers in order to reconfigure the size of our islands? I don't know who will be at the table. I don't know what will be served at the table. But I do know that we will be living in exquisite understanding of what the plague means, even if we cannot see all of how we are changed and will be changed. It will be different, but it will be (although let's not rule out spontaneous combustion at this point). I already have my matzo and matzo meal squirreled away (not that there was a run on matzo). I'm not worried that I won't be able to find gratitude and joy the first night. I will be so grateful to be there for another Passover, if that is true, and I cannot wait to hear the youngest children ask the four questions. How is this night different from all other nights, indeed.
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