RESPONSIBILITY
by Don Bolognese
The Roaring Twenties, the Swinging Thirties, Hitler – Fascism, the 40s, the War years, McCarthyism, The Red Scare, the Eisenhower Years, the “I Have a Dream” decade of assassinations, The Bomb –ICBMs, with power enough to make Hiroshima look like a fireworks display, Watergate, Kent State, the Stones – Woodstock Nation, the Beatles, a cultural revolution, Red states, Blue states, the dissembling of a United America, the culture wars…
Just reading the above, severely edited, “headline history” is exhausting. Of course, societies are always in flux, but in contrast to previous millennia ours has been changing at warp speed – yes, let’s not forget the Space age, a man on the Moon, America’s last forward-looking effort before its descent into national fratricide.
From the end of WW1 to 2020, this world, this nation, families - and the few individuals in their ninth and tenth decades, have experienced a veritable whirlwind of change: technologically, socially, environmentally and now, with this virus – existentially.
What are we to do?
To a world “advanced” enough to challenge the infinite complexities of space travel, to, in just a few decades create a world-wide market place for goods made thousands of miles from their eventual customers, and to invent an international communications network capable of uniting a store owner in the Indian subcontinent with an Italian craftsman in a common purpose is an accomplishment unimagined by most adults born in the 50s and 60s.
Yet, here we are, billions of us, trapped in our own solitude, struggling to survive the threat borne in a tiny speck of protein.
And – our available weapons to fight this pandemic: not a one. No, sorry, there is one. That weapon is in us, in our DNA, it is the evolutionary imperative to survive – an individualized weapon powered by our “will.” A determined, selfless and socially responsible acknowledgement that each of us can prevent, at some costs, becoming an agent of this epidemic. Self- motivated isolation is our only sure weapon at this point; our immune systems are fallible and will remain so until our individual defense against this enemy is strengthened by a vaccine and other palliative remedies.
For those of us who grew up in the 1940s and ‘50s, polio was our “corona”.
None of us will ever forget our palpable fear of polio and the possibility of living the rest of our lives in an iron lung, or as a cripple. For that reason, Jonas Salk– our deliverer, became a true hero
Now it is our turn – every single one of us, young and old, to be a hero – not only for our own survival, but, for everyone in our circle, for everyone we may be forced to interact with, for medical personnel who would have to treat us and for all those in positions of responsibility for bringing this horror to an end.
Each of us can be a Dr. Jonas Salk in staunching the spread of the virus until an effective vaccine can assume that task. And all it requires is “being separate” not only from other people, but from any situation which exposes ourselves to infection, especially those of us with any pre-existing condition vulnerable to corona. Our spirit, our will to survive, our immune systems, and our determination, can fortify our sense of “Responsibility”, allowing each of us to savor our role in humanity’s heroic victory.
Don Bolognese, author, Illustrator, Educator, a native New Yorker now “self-isolating” in Vermont, was born in 1934, grew up in the Great depression, survived the childhood diseases and polio common to that era; he embraces the hope that Humanity’s genius for Creativity and compassion will lead us to form a more humane world.