War in Peace
I’ve never known war. Never did bomb shelter drills in school, never worried about being drafted, and none of my friends have died on the battlefield. This makes me a lucky one, I know, and I’m grateful for how safe my life has been. But from what I’ve read, heard, and seen about war, I can see a few similarities between a time of war and my life over the past few weeks.
Since last fall, my father-in-law had been planning a trip to India to visit us. He wanted to see our school, connect with our students, and taste the life we’ve been living for almost two years now. The day he landed in India four weeks ago was the last day that tourists were allowed to enter the country. That coincided with the beginning of our March holiday from school, so many students had made their beds, tidied their rooms, and gone home to their families for a week, like they’d done many times before. Four days later, the school emailed everyone to tell us regular school operations were closed. Students who were home had to stay home, and students who remained had to evacuate immediately. In an instant, everyone got their own partition story. See-you-laters became Goodbye-forevers. A dorm room became a museum exhibit called Life Before COVID-19. Within days, government officials drew harsh boundaries in a country we thought was one, contiguous whole. The devastating effects of this shockwave from Delhi are rippling across the country -- yet another ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ event for a people who have endured so much.
Many countries have fortified the thick black lines that divide them from others on maps. Our Indian students with families in the Middle East can’t go back to their parents right now or for the foreseeable future. Our Korean students went home knowing that their student visas are now in jeopardy and they may not be able to return for many months. All of this is happening not because a missile was fired or a bomb dropped, but because the sheer act of travel, of making human contact, is now a threat, regardless of who issued your passport or what you look like.
Because human contact is the danger, supply chains are disrupted. When we ordered groceries recently, we had to really think about what would last and what we might need to survive for a month or two. There’s rice today, but will there be rice tomorrow? Will we be allowed to leave our homes to go to the grocery store? Will our phones and internet work? If we run out of gas to cook with, can it be refilled? Because we’re still living on our school campus for now, we’re in this with our colleagues, and the school manages a good deal of the infrastructure. But again, we don’t know how long any of this will last, and it’s the uncertainty that makes this especially jarring.
Unlike in other wars, notions of us vs. them are still on the fringes, perpetuated mostly by people who have developed within themselves that unfortunate cocktail of fear and ignorance. But there is a conflict here, a challenge to our way of life by a microscopic threat almost as existentially dangerous as the Cretaceous asteroid. We saw it coming when it was too late. It crashed into humanity and threw up debris that shines a light on how, despite our advances in research, manufacturing, public health, and social welfare, we are ill-prepared for this battle. What good were triceratops horns in the face of endless winter?
Though our pointy-faced friend didn’t make it, evidence suggests that the human race will survive this pandemic, but how will we adapt? When the time for reflection comes, what will we learn? Mathieu Ricard, a biologist and practiced Buddhist monk, argues that “Western efficiency is a major contribution to minor needs.” In an American context, Princeton professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes that “[t]he crisis is laying bare the brutality of an economy organized around production for the sake of profit and not human need." Years from now, historians will coalesce these opinions and connect the dots between now and then. We have the power to shape that narrative today.
First though, our goal must be to survive this war with as little loss of life as possible. I order my groceries, keep a distance from others, and take it all one day at a time. When faced with the opportunity for a hasty evacuation, Leaf and I decided to stay on the hillside for now, because this is a comfortable and remote place to do our part in waiting out the storm. When the virus eventually waves its white flag and surrenders to our collective resistance, it will be time to grieve, and then it will be time to rebuild.
On the other side of this disaster, I hope we remember who kept society running. I hope we remember what and who made us happy. I hope we remember the time when we were told to stand six feet apart, and I hope we hug our loved ones tighter than ever. Evenings are for family and friends, not work emails. The miracle of life is for joy and connection, not Sisyphean labor and competition. Enough with the bullshit jobs.
Disasters happen. Sometimes we bring them upon ourselves, and sometimes we are dealt a challenge by the whims of biology and physics. We’re lucky to be united in this struggle against the virus in a moment of peacetime with only some trappings of war. In an effort to learn from the past, I looked up the first newspaper I could find from 1943. The news of the day featured updates on government benefits for disability and death, food rationing committees, and results of the Kite Day competition: “Nine-year-old Mitsuru Kawasaki... won first in the unique division with a blue and white box-kite entry”. Congratulations, Mitsuru, for winning the division, but more importantly, for seeking and making joy in a time of despair. Thank you for reminding us what we ought to be doing with the precious and fragile gift of life.
