Stories from the grateful and the living dead

Robert Webb in his London garden. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer (cropped)

Instead of rushing madly back into "life" as the various impacts of  Covid-19 wane, I hope we make a deliberate effort to take stock of what the lockdowns and isolation and perhaps the fear of looking foolish by wearing a mask have taught us, or can teach us. As Winston Churchill said at the end of World War II: “Never let a good crisis go to waste". This was in the context of the effort to establish the United Nations organisation. 

Many people have found that their "life" pre-Covid was anything but fulfilling, rather, what was "normal" was a mess of misplaced goals, self-defeating moral decisions, superficiality and loneliness. Part of that superficiality was that unrestrained activity gave no time to assess what was really important in their life.

On the other hand, there have been those who have had - maybe still having - a rough time of it with the Delta variant of the virus now rampaging through cities and nations, but who have been led to see that there are important features of their life that make their life satisfying, that these provide a new direction for the future.

These features of life are prominent in lists of what enables a person to thrive: Relationships within the family and with friends, knowledge that the drive to earn more money is a killer when it comes to true happiness, time given instead to lasting works of literature or to the sweep of the cultural world, developing a personal skill or talent, and having an opportunity (and reason) to pray and meditate. 

That these features definitely are the key to a fulfilling life is borne out by the experience of people who have had a life-threatening condition. There is a symmetry between what they are grateful for and what is most important. We can look at two cases that highlight this point.

The first personal account was published this week where Andrew Stafford, a 50-year-old, talked about coming out the other side of open-heart surgery. He had had mental health difficulties over many years and he "had been warned of possible depression in the wake of the surgery".

However, he has been surprised at the outcome:

These days [...] I feel like a Zen master. Not that I’d recommend heart surgery as a solution to psychological trauma, but if nothing else it gave me a radical sense of perspective and gratitude, an attitude I wasn’t previously on familiar terms with.

For sure, gratitude is a neglected quality, firstly as it relates to being thankful for what exists or what happens in our life, but also as it extends to a readiness to show appreciation for something, and to return kindness.

Stafford states that he is newly grateful to his true friends, identified through their support amid the messy circumstances of his life, and also to strangers who stepped forward to carry some of his burden at the time of his surgery. In addition, he discovered that he could forgive those who let him down:

So I found forgiveness. I had always been harsh on myself. Now I realise how hard I had been on others, too. It was all just sweet life, and humans being human: magnificently multidimensional, maddeningly inconsistent. I was no different.

And joy: "Every second is a second chance. [...] I find fleeting moments of joy everywhere."

Finally, the practicalities of surviving a heart defect were another cause of gratitude: 

Most of all, I am grateful that I live in a country where, in the middle of a global pandemic, I was admitted to one of the best cardiac hospitals in the country, under the care of a brilliant surgeon and medical team, and walked away with a bill for $74 in medications.

The new perspective that his ordeal has given him allows Stafford to conclude:

I am outrageously lucky. The randomness of my good fortune is never lost on me. And yet I nearly threw away my own life more than once. I had to have it nearly taken away to rediscover my lust for it.

The second case of gratitude bubbling forth after a life-or-death situation involves a writer and actor who through a fortuitiously timed medical check was also found to need heart surgery to save his life.

Robert Webb reports one of his steps forward after his surgery, a change in the life he had been living: "Trying to be nicer on social media, limiting my contact with the news, turning inwards [...] the world feels new." Another: "I really did stop to smell the blossom in the trees; I listened to the songs of birds and admired the daffodils in all their trembling grace." 

The nutshell view:

Mainly I’m overtaken by gratitude. I was insanely lucky to get this over with before the virus struck, and my mended heart goes out to all those left waiting for treatment. I’m grateful for the Back [TV show] medical and to all the doctors and nurses, the ones we applaud on our doorstep every week and perhaps always should have. I wrote a book about someone getting a second chance and I thought at the time it was a work of fiction. I feel re-blessed by my children. I thank what higher will brought me to a wife like Abbie.

It's right and proper to thank that "higher will" who guides us in our lives, calling us from time to time to reflect on how we should live in order to be the best person we could possibly be, and to live life abundantly - see John 10:10.  In all, gratitude should prominent in our life as we use the Covid-19 crisis to set our life in order with a fresh perspective.

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