What can COVID teach us?
As we prepare ourselves for the second wave of COVID, there is a great deal of concern about our friends, family, communities’ health, fiscal stability, and well-being. In the past few weeks, my anxiety started to escalate. I could feel myself and the rest of the city bracing for the upcoming winter months with deep, foreboding uncertainty. COVID in the spring was so painful for the city. How will we survive a shutdown in the winter?
If we consider our planet as a living organism that we are all apart of, it is clear that COVID-19 has taken over. Its virological essence and the leaders’ political response to it are all we talk about. We have been so busy trying to flatten to curve and caught up in the bi-partisan debate that we have forgotten to consider COVID’s other face. That is its medicinal nature.
Within every disease, there is medicine. Not merely the cure that will eradicate the disease, but a lesson that the illness is trying to teach us. Sickness occurs when our system is out of balance. It alerts us that something is wrong and needs our attention. The word “medicine” is a development of the word “to meditate.” They both come from the Latin “medere” which means “to meditate, to reflect.”
So let’s reflect upon this. Why is this virus here? What is its meditational value? What can we learn from it? Preventing the spread of COVID is essential. But the bigger question is how we can bring our world into a long-term, sustainable equilibrium. It is easy to get swept up in the speed and pressures of modern living. Our society is sick, and COVID is shining a light on that harsh reality. Limited travel is one of the most prevalent ways COVID has changed our world. During the pandemic, we saw most travels grind to a halt. For many of us, this was very disappointing. Spring and Summer are the time for adventure and exploration. I, for one, love to travel and see new places. I have friends and family all over the world, and my heart yearns to see them.
But within just a few weeks of halted travel, we saw massive improvements in air and water quality all over the world. The truth of the matter is the amount of travel we have grown accustomed to is not sustainable. Flying has become so affordable that we hop on a plane to get away whenever we can, without registering its effects on our planet. Airplanes run on kerosene fuel, which, when combusted, releases a large amount of carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere. Planes support the economy in various ways, such as imports, exports, tourism, and business. But the importance of the industry comes with disastrous effects on the climate. Of course, travel can be a way of honoring and enjoying our world’s immense cultural diversity. Traveling can inspire us and open our eyes to new ways of living. Still, we need to practice moderation and respect and come to a deep understanding that travel takes a huge toll on our planet.
Cruises have become increasingly popular over the years as a comfortable, stress-free vacation. These cruises dump their waste in environmental habitats, destroying the nature their passengers claim to enjoy. On average, cruise ships generate 8.4 gallons/day/person of sewage. A large cruise ship (3,000 passengers and crew) can create an estimated 15,000 to 30,000 gallons per day of sewage. We all need to take a hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves how we can do better. For example, Burning Man is a community of highly progressive, liberal, environmentally-minded individuals. But these 80,000 people that gather in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert each summer create a carbon footprint of 100,000 tons of CO2 in just a few weeks. After this study, Burning Man Organizers developed a plan to be carbon negative by 2030. But how can we, in good conscience, participate in this event that is equivalent to a natural disaster?
We want to have experiences that create memories and are meaningful. But are we living for that vacation, that cruise, or that party? What about all of the moments in between? Are we living the bulk of our life to get to a highlight? What does that say about the actual quality of our lives? What if we were to consider ways to express ourselves, enjoy nature, and lead creative, fulfilling lives every day? When we look at who has been most affected by COVID, our system’s injustices become glaringly obvious. How is it that the jobs we consider “essential” are some of the most poorly compensated positions? Calling a service essential and yet not paying people appropriately for these services is a perfect example of how classism is still the foundation of our society. COVID then runs rampant in lower-income communities. These very same communities that provide essential services live in districts that receive the least funding for everything from hospitals to education.
What will it take for our government to put an end to gerrymandering? Look at some of the health conditions that make COVID all the more dangerous; heart disease, obesity, diabetes. All of these conditions are easily treatable by adjustments in lifestyle and diet. Studies show that a whole food plant-based diet can decrease dependency on medications and even reverse these conditions. And yet this information is not available from the American Diabetes Association or the American Heart Association. The ugly truth is that these organizations depend on the same diseases they aim to cure. Hospitals and pharmaceutical companies make their profits on illness.
When will we begin to value the quality of life over profit margin? When will it become illegal for lobbyists to determine our laws by paying off our politicians?
We are obsessed with prolonging life through invasive operations and medications with dangerous side effects because we live in denial of death as a natural process. We do everything we can to extend our life even at the expense of its quality. What if we were to flip the script and focus on life-affirming practices, diets, habits, social customs and embrace the inevitability of death as a natural process, a door we must all walkthrough.
These are trying, uncertain times for sure, and there is still so much left unknown. We are far from being through this global crisis, and the way our world is changing is still unfolding. If we can stay curious about what the lessons are in these trying times, then hopefully, we will never “go back to normal.” We will see that what we considered normal was, in fact, abnormal, unjust, and unsustainable. Maybe it takes a global pandemic to wake us up to what needs to change.
Use this time to the best of your ability. Use this time to raise your voice about what needs reorientation. Create change in yourself, little by little, day by day, and these struggling times will not have been in vain.
