COVID-19: Is That Life Worth Saving?
A Difficult Question…
About one week after lockdown was ordered in West Virginia, I treated a patient without respiratory symptoms and admitted for an unrelated problem, who became sick and tested positive for COVID-19 two days later. I self-quarantined and anxiously waited for symptoms to start, but which fortunately never came. Of course you think of all the scenarios that may play out, and ask yourself questions about the state of your affairs if you don’t survive. And then I had to answer this question: is the life I’m living worth saving?
I have a job where I live on the edge of being burnt-out and always wonder if it is still worthwhile to be a doctor. Is that a career worth saving? I spend many hours working, recovering from shifts, sleeping, getting ready for work. Limited energy and time. Am I a Dad worth having? I’ve spent many dollars on vacations, weekend breaks, day-trips and other escapes, with very few pleasurable moments to remember. Are those things worth doing?
Although there are many worthwhile and good things in my life, I have to admit that a good part of it has become filled with non-essential clutter: purposeless role-playing, self-damaging demands from myself and others, time-wasting non-necessities. A life for the better part choked with things that bring no pleasure. Is that a life worth saving?
Thoreau’s words still ring true today: The majority of people — regardless of income or status — live lives that lack quality. Faced with the reality of being exposed to a potentially life-threatening infection, I had to examine my life and realized that aspects of it reeked of desperation. What is worse is that most of it have been allowed with my permission, some of it even self-inflicted.
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
— From Walden, Henry David Thoreau.
How important is it to examine your life and find your true values and attachments! It is not only the passive or inactive who may end up living a life of presumably deserved desperation, but even with hard work and effort, achievers can reach a desired level of comfort and security, only to be left utterly dissatisfied. It shouldn’t happen only during distress, but a continuous, life-long process of self-examination is necessary to steer away from a life where even death start looking like an acceptable escape.
Life is supposed to be simple but we have complicated it with attachments, liaisons, memberships and other social chains in an attempt to feel part of something and find some happiness which is really only achievable by stripping life down to its essentials. I realize that for many people being locked-down brings mounting frustration, but my initial frustration of not being able to meet many of my daily obligations, became gradually replaced but a sense of relief — that some life-sucking burden has been removed.
With my time in quarantine and even now with less demands, I’ve had more time to think and contemplate past decisions which brought back the memories of things I always wanted to do. Not only essential things like being a better father to my kids, but dreams that I buried in busyness over the years: becoming a photographer, building that website, starting that side business… finally executing those dreams with the lethal excuses of telling myself I am not good enough, not talented enough… too old. It took the possibly that my life would end soon to realize how stupid those reasons are.
And maybe I’m wrong! Maybe it wasn’t those reasons that kept me from doing things, but my relentless desire for safety, security and comfort. I spent so many years studying, training, working and trying to make it in a Profession that would eventually put me right in harm’s way. To be sure, I cannot complain about the compensation I receive and I am as addicted to the biweekly salary as the next employee, but there is no security anywhere. No guarantees you will even be alive tomorrow.
After my exposure, Employee Health contacted me to arrange for testing and to find out when I would be ready to work again. No personal contact or well-wishes. And why should they? When did I start expecting my employer to be a source of comfort? Why even try to find meaning in work? 52% of people in the American workforce are completely disengaged doing work that is utterly meaningless to them, and maybe that is how it should be! It does not mean they don’t have meaning in their lives, but it might mean they avoided the trap of trying to find meaning in job! Even in my profession there is an impenetrable barrier of bureaucracy, insurance companies, etc and I probably spend 80% of my day mindlessly clicking away in front of a computer. That cannot be the meaning of my life, and yet I still try to!
What have I been doing with time away from work? You’d think I would’ve used the opportunity to strip my life down to the essentials, but again, sadly not. I am an introvert and my happy place is a cottage in the woods, spending time with my family: hiking, walking, canoeing, sitting around a campfire, and yet I hate to think of the money I’ve spent on beach vacations thinking that going to a crowded resort was the acceptable thing to do. Staring at the most desolate thing I can think of — a blue ocean, drinking lukewarm beer, smelling others’ cigarette smoke, wondering where the kids are…
My attempts at doing the acceptable thing has perfectly played into Society’s demands to fit into a prescribed mold. With gradually less resistance from me, I have been doing what is expected of me instead of remaining true to who I am. Instead of standing up and taking the blows like Oliver Twist, in many instances I’ve joined the ranks of the countless orphans who sit motionless, not opening their mouths, trying to keep the master happy:
‘Please, sir,’ replied Oliver, ‘I want some more.’
The master aimed a blow at Oliver’s head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arm; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.
— Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
Most of us have been praying for a long time for stability, tranquility, constancy. These prayers have been answered resulting in stagnation, disillusionment and, let’s be honest — desperation. Answered prayers over which many tears have been shed:
“More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.”
― Truman Capote
Maybe in the end this virus did get me, and robbed me of the life I was used to and is ending the life I am living — the life of quiet desperation. Maybe it did get me and is stripping me of things I have become attached to and has me down to my underwear, to the bare essentials. But this is not the sense of loss I was expecting — it is the feeling of being able to breathe and to inhale the crisp air of a new Spring morning!
It’s new and I know it’s only starting, but it is a new life and it’s worth staying alive for.
