Lessons I will take with me into 2021
Do we shake the awful dust of 2020 from our shoes and begin anew in 2021? Yes and no. There was much to learn from this challenging year of uncertainty, sadness, confusion, disappointment and loneliness.
How do we live our lives in the midst of and in the continuing wake of the pandemic?
We should, and I do so include me in this should, take the lessons learned into the future. The virus, as malevolent as it was and is, is also a normal part of nature, a way that nature mixes it up. In that mix up, we respond as humans do with intelligence and compassion or the lack thereof.
Let us remember all of the ways that the latter lack of intelligence has exposed the political, social and economic flaws that have made people more vulnerable to COVID-19. Let us remember where we have fallen short of not only our ability to care for the vulnerable, learning from this to be prepared for the inevitable appearance of similar pathogens. It is too easy to think of pandemics as something that happened in textbooks.
Let’s not forget the all-too-many examples of where our moral compass has been compromised. Using this disaster for personal and political gains is an abomination, an almost biblical word, but appropriate.
And, yes, let’s remember the many, many examples of goodness and caring, those that rose to the occasion, those that brought creativity and courage to an unsettled world.
We have processes, honed from the beginning of our Constitutionally-driven nation, that have held us in good stead. We have decent, honest and morally right citizens who are willing to risk their all for these processes in the halls of government, hospitals or grocery stores. We should take these processes and these good people with us into the new year. We should emphasize that we are truly all in this together.
If nothing else, COVID-19 has shown us how important we are for each other, how family and friend are integral to the good life.
And we should cherish the memories, the people whose lives were exemplary, their accumulated knowledge and influence, examples, templates for the future.
Among those whose memory I cherish is James “Jim” Reagan.
It was more than 50 years ago that I remember sitting across a desk from Jim in his office. I’m not really sure about the reason I was there. Was I, a newly-minted teacher, there to pay for my VW insurance? Our conversation wandered into a conundrum that I had regarding a particular group of students, who, classified as non-regents, had no set curriculum.
“They are leaving school unprepared for life,” or some similar words, were my exasperated declaration.
My frustration became a challenge for Jim, one that he accepted with gusto.
Our goal was to have these students leave high school with a set of functioning tools of “real life” economics – the “nitty gritty.” He came up the hill from his office on Main Street, prepared to educate a small group of juniors about getting a job, saving money, buying insurance, paying taxes and finding and paying for an apartment. It was a tour de force of living in the real world.
Each student was outfitted with a faux checkbook and a measured faux amount in our faux bank. Living as an adult meant paying your way, and as we traversed the usuals of adult life, the faux checkbook gave an air of reality to the exercise. With faux bank books they could earn faux money for deposit. At the end of the project, they filled out faux income tax forms. It was beyond successful. Wondering if any of those students, who have most likely retired by now, remember?
This wasn’t a promo for his business, it was Jim as a functioning member of a community that he loved.
The years passed, my insurance payments stayed with the Reagan agency family and I would see Jim and members of his large family at school or church. There were always easy smiles and “Hi, how are you?”
It was only a few years ago at the St. Francis Xavier parish picnic on a Sunday afternoon in the park when my husband and I shared an hour of conversation with Jim and his wife, Jane. My gosh, I had read about the Battle of the Bulge, watched movies about it, but this was the first time that I had actually spoken to someone who was there. It was thrilling, not just because of his descriptive exploits but because, as Tom Brokaw says in “The Greatest Generation,” here was a gentleman, a successful businessman, a church-going, school-supporting, father, husband, uncle and friend who had experienced such evil and had come home to be known for his gentle kindness, exemplifying the strength of a moral center.
Jim died yesterday. His son, Rick, wrote a lovely piece about his Dad’s passing on his Facebook page. The blameless tears came easily. You know, you take so much for granted. I hadn’t seen Jim for some time. I knew that his health was failing, but … well, you know.
Our contemporary world provides us with so many examples of how not to be, how not to care, that when someone as real and as good a Jim leaves, there is a shudder of pain and loss for those of us who knew him. In today’s difficult world, Jim was a stellar example of the person we hope we could be. And as he leaves us, so goes not only an individual history, but an entire library of experience, a web of connections encompassing generations and community.
So, I take lessons from the virus, and of good people, into 2021. A not-so-subtle list of what I believe to be the way life should be … with and without masks.
