Coronavirus: Just for Today

Successfully settling in to isolation requires a certain suspension of the future, but the idea that we should NOT think deeply about the future (will there even be one?) goes against the grain.  One has to commit to the here-and-now: play games, stream opera, dance your head off, bake -- whatever your thing is, do it with focus.   As one pundit told to me, "We don't want to make people think harder and more broadly at this time."

But, based on the advice of Al-Anon, I think it's OK to use a few brain cells to think.  I take this from the Al-Anon prayer for hard times, "Just for Today. A highly effective guide to managing hard times, it opens with the line, "I can do something for 12 hours that would appall me if I felt I had to keep it for a lifetime." It seems incredibly apt for this period of managed retreat in which we find ourselves.

"Just for Today" has nine sets of suggestions: keep it in the day, be happy, adjust to what is, strengthen my mind, exercise my soul, be agreeable, have a program, have a quiet half hour to myself, and be unafraid.  Notice it's all phrased as "my": the heart of Al-Anon, as you might imagine, is that you can't fix the other person, but you can fix yourself.

The advice of particular interest is this:

Just for today I will try to strengthen my mind. I will study. I will learn something useful. I will not be a mental loafer. I will read something that requires effort, thought and concentration.

The topic I want to propose for deep thought is this: we are in this crisis of pandemic disease because of longterm and profound abuse of the natural world.  Sonia Shah's article in The Nation has the provocative headline, "Think wild animals are to blame for the coronavirus? Think again."  She points to the massive destruction of habitat that caused species to interact in ways they did not before.  She points out,

The problem is the way that cutting down forests and expanding towns, cities, and industrial activities creates pathways for animal microbes to adapt to the human body. 

Adding to the insult of clearing forests and wild places is the widespread introduction of factory farming, which introduces a host of other ecological pressures on living species.  Dr. Robert Wallace has called this process "farming pathogens."  Such farming, by overriding natural protections, accelerates the production of deadly viruses, bacteria and fungi.  Aided by globalization, these germs can easily travel the globe in a few weeks, as coronavirus has done in this pandemic.  While these are difficult -- and often technical -- concepts, understanding that we have to begin to face these longterm dangers is a mind-stretching exercise that is worth some of your mind-strengthening time.  I'm working with Dr. Robert Fullilove of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health to share the important work that Drs. Rodrick, Deborah and Robert Wallace -- a family of geniuses -- have done on the issue.  Here's the pandemic prevention concept they are putting forward.