Writing Good

“Each of us has the plague within him; no one, no one on earth is free from it. And I know, too, that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in a careless moment we breathe in someone's face and fasten the infection on him. What's natural is the microbe. All the rest – health, integrity, purity (if you like) – is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter.” 

― Albert Camus, "The Plague"

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Dear Kate,

This pandemic is doing us some major good.

The bads we all know, and frankly I am not sure continuously taking in more bad news isn't adding to them.  Following on social media trolls and demagogues who draw but a few lines and blame but never themselves is certainly hazardous to our health.

Speaking not from the position of a contrarian, I want to point out some obvious and pretty major goods of this pandemic experience.

I read somewhere last week this is going to be the beginning of a new parenting epoch, the end of the era of indulgence.  I can't find the article now, but let me give you my spin on it: now that we have our own Exodus experience, we can forever point ourselves back to this point and refer the rest of our days to the present enslavement and (possible) emancipation.

That's ideally speaking.  And please indulge me to speak ideally now.

To my kids a world without the internet is unimaginable, not because they don't want to, but the language is not there for the imagining.  It is just as unimaginable why even now having the internet not only doesn't stop us from spreading fake news and biased opinions out of fear or greed or conceit or whatever voodoo concoction we have in our head but actually exacerbates our prior heart condition.  Ever wonder, even if we are to get our "facts" and opinions from the most "reliable" sources, still somehow whatever comes out of our daily thought and action often isn't quite right, not a distillation of truths we would expect from our very learned and civilized selves?

I say, doesn't matter what good material one is to throw into it, if the story itself isn't any good the thing still sucks.  Ever heard of the saying that "the most special effect" of a movie is its screenplay?

So here is a new story we find ourselves in, one of constraint, limitation, defeat and frustration, and a hope for emancipation and deliverance.  Ideally speaking, a story like this would involve some sort of self-discovery as an antidote to the counterfeit that is the Disney princess narrative, frozen in its commercialism and our consumerism.  Even more ideally speaking, such a new story would make us see people and the world around us a little bit more truthfully, now that everything is pressed and pressured to have its truth squeezed out of its core.  And being hopelessly romantic we might even indulge ourselves to ask the most basic human questions such as the meaning of life, the problem of suffering and dying, and, maybe, just maybe, about God.

If this is what the new story is doing to and for us, then I think it is a major good thing.  We are a short-sighted, self-indulgent, and extremely cranky generation, and we will have a very tough time aging and dying, no amount of money and drugs and comfort is gonna save us from kicking and screaming our way to the grave.

So why not go while and where the going is good, and write ourselves into this new story?

Yours, Alex