Welp, yesterday Governor Abbott declared that schools will be out of session until May 4th at the earliest. This morning/yesterday(?) the governor of California declared school's out for summer (adding to similar decrees in Arizona, Kansas, Oklahoma, Virginia, and a few other states).
I don't drink much, but when I heard the news, I really wanted a margarita.
This by far isn't the only school year in which I've struggled. Three other shining examples are: the year Hurricane Ike slammed into our area, cutting school out for over a week (2008); the year my mom died and I barely made it through spring semester (2012); and the year Hurricane/Tropical Storm Harvey hit, cutting school out for two weeks and then continuing when many (including myself) had to adjust to life as our houses were fixed (I slept on my couch for 6 months because I didn't want to go to a hotel while my walls were getting redone, floors fixed, and then kitchen redone).
But this by far is the worst.
One of the most remarkable books I've read is Man's Search For Meaning by Victor Frankl. I used to teach that book to my leadership class every year until recently (now I highly recommend it for students needing to fill in the "nonfiction" box of their reading Bingo/book-of-the-month goal sheet). In it, Dr. Frankl relates his experiences in various concentration camps during the Holocaust. It's not a typical Holocaust book; it's almost a self-help book in which he explains about the importance of finding meaning in one's life in order to survive the most darkest tragedy one may have (and he uses his experiences in the camps as support). He wrote about three stages of mental reaction to the camp, which can in turn be considered universal for tragedy: admission/shock, entrenchment in camp routine/apathy, and the period following liberation/disillusionment.
Please note, I am by NO MEANS comparing our quarantine/isolation experience to the horrific torture and murder of several million Jews at the hands of sociopaths. I'm just trying to apply his ideas of logo therapy (using logic to get past difficult times)
Here is my interpretation of his three stages to what's going on right now:
1. Shock: I think this happened for us around Spring Break. There were several cases in the US, but the depth of it hadn't hit us. We had a bit of foreboding around us: our boss told us to take our school laptops home, just in case. We heard of the horror stories and shutdowns from China, but that seemed so far away. Stores were starting to run out of toilet paper and bottled water (so random). But then, at the end of Spring Break - the shock came. The forced social distancing. Schools shut down for a week. Shock in that - what is actually happening here? How did this happen? What does this mean? What is our future going to look like?
2. Entrenchment in routine/apathy. As we started hunkering down, tempers flared. Egos rising and shattering. Grocery stores cleaned out by able-bodied people, leaving little for the elderly and poor to pick from. People buying mass quantities of hand sanitizer and sell it an an uncharge on Amazon and eBay to make money off of other's suffering (and to "survive," as they claim). People aggressively announcing that they're not going to socially distance because it's a conspiracy, because it's the government's way of controlling, because it's "better" than the flu. And then it's all of a sudden NOT better than the flu. Masks fly off of shelves by people NOT in the medical field. It at times becomes "all man for himself" in some situations - the hoarding takes on a new level (let the toilet paper jokes fly). While there are wonderful stories about caring and kindness coming around, there is a minority of bad apples poisoning the barrel. I hope that the stories of the neighbors dancing in the street daily at 11am, the stories of authors reading aloud their books on the internet, the stories of people sewing masks at home for the medical professionals thrive, and maybe - just maybe - our apathy will not be center stage and we will veer away from Dr. Frankl's second stage.
3. The period following liberation/disillusionment. This stage has yet to be entered. In his book, he describes the survivors trying to go back to their old life without the realization that one can never achieve their old life - family members were dead, houses were sold, their belongings stolen. In this stage, he noted the suicides of survivors who could not quite figure out their place in this new life. While I don't think anything as drastic as this will occur with us, it does make me wonder what life will be after we are released. Will people be angry with schools for how they attempted to do the best with what they could? Will they be angry with the government? Will this change the politics of the country? Will high school seniors become bitter about how their senior year was atypical? Will we as a species become better or worse? Will those who have lost their jobs be able to get new ones? And what about those who lost family members to COVID-19. Will there be anger at how it was handled? Will their grief be doubled, tripled with the addition of loss of jobs, loss of dream trips, loss of a feeling of safety.
One thing is for certain, Dr. Frankl said that the meaning of life is love. Whilst almost dying, whilst starving, whilst having to make choices that could kill someone else or himself, he said that the thought of his wife (who he did not realize had already been murdered in a camp) is what helped him survive.
I hope that love and kindness is what helps us now.
So in this time of fear, the time of immense frustration, this time of wondering what life will look like for us on the other side, be kind.
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