In 2003 I injured my right knee, causing tissue damage that took several years and surgery to fully heal. It was inconvenient, veered between aggravating and miserable, and was more than slightly frightening, as I felt too young to face permanent mobility impairment. But two invaluable lessons came from that ordeal: I promised myself never to take any fundamental ability like unrestricted freedom of action for granted again. Also, I accepted that my life need not be perfect to be very much worthwhile.

Ever since, I have tried not to lose sight of these realizations. Being without something so essential to autonomy, independence and enjoyment of day-to-day activity as ease of movement is a harsh, but relentless reminder not to lose sight of its value again. But also that even a constrained life may offer contentment, if one lets it in by not wallowing in resentment at misfortune. Both those lessons are proving useful now in the aftermath of COVID.

As that peril recedes, I am making a conscious effort to let something positive – or at least something other than ingrained pessimism – come of it. I’m trying not to revert to complacency about basic, but congenial aspects of life as I too often did (a habit, despite lessons from my knee) before the world around us tightened into a self-protective curl from the virus. Whatever a ‘congenial aspect’ means for each of us; climbing Yosemite, enjoying some long anticipated in-person event, reveling in a gathering of loved ones, or simply drifting along in some unconsciously-cherished routine.

As we have now seen, such things are not ‘granted.’ They can be lost, or at least compromised. However, we may cherish them more when, and if, they return.

For example, Talleyrand, the French aristocrat-politician whose career spanned (and abetted) several upheavals of history, once said ‘No one who did not live before the Revolution (of 1789) can know the true sweetness of living.’ Life was indeed sweet then for nobles like him, though miserable for most other French subjects whose labor and poverty sustained Elysium for a narrow elite.

Still: We might take a lesson from his perspective, belatedly appreciating our blessings as we recover from months of stressful anxiety. Talleyrand’s class privilege was never fully restored after the Revolution, whereas most of us can return to largely the same patterns our days had before COVID. If life was not always ‘sweet’ for us, perhaps neither were we fully attuned to its delights, grand to subtle. And at least it was not ambient dread, disruption and death for most of us, as it became after March, 2020.

Might we now grant such unremarked mellowness as much weight as we previously accorded our lives’ struggles, or mere monotony? Might we now viscerally grasp what a treasure being alive is, just in itself? After having our cocoons of personal freedom and safety ruptured, can we resolve not to return to dashing reflexively from one stimulus to the next as our acquisitive, tech-driven, Self-focused culture cumulatively prods us to do?

(I must note in passing how the Pandemic exposed and worsened many inequities in society. How it cast harsh, accusing light on whom our economy is meant to serve, and whose interests – even lives – are expendable for its benefit. Further, there are ‘elites’ in America today who’d do well to recall Talleyrand’s regrets at what can happen when a privileged few indifferently exploit the many. They may be rich, but are nevertheless fools if they assume such a reality will be tolerated forever. France’s pampered court at Versailles learned that in 1789.)

It may be salutary how COVID forced us all to face insecurities (financial, mortal, etc.) which confront many of our fellowmen constantly. Thus, the more sheltered among us could emerge more fully ‘human’ than mere consuming organisms if we now try to be more conscious of the challenges of others who share our nations and planet. As we revert to familiar pre-Pandemic regimens, we might, mindful of our own recent vulnerability, try to let our world expand to overlap more with the ‘worlds’ of others. Especially of those whose whole existence is chronically precarious, at least by being more sensitized to their daily struggles.

The types of experience which, prior to the great lockdown, bolstered us to carry on (and to which we would now return) are, as noted before, different for each of us. Many people draw peace, strength, contentment, etc. from the embrace of Nature – azure seas, mountains, fantastical tropics – absorbing vitality from the presence of such elemental power and beauty. Less adventurous souls, like me, prefer our man-made world; in my own case, most familiarly, the ‘Golden Mile of Broadway,’ my name for the nearby stretch of the main commercial street of my Chicago neighborhood.

Though very ‘pedestrian’ both literally and architecturally, pre-COVID Broadway was for me simultaneously invigorating and calming, thrumming companionably in a gritty gavotte of commercial and social interaction; my own concrete ‘comfort zone.’ But during lockdown, it became a hollow of its former self, its absence of life echoing a palpable presence of danger. I feared the minor magic of my Golden Mile might never revive fully. If at all.

And if such a throbbing artery could not pulse again, maybe no place could. Between the menace of the virus and the upheaval of social discontent (and reaction) forced to the surface when the dampers that had muffled it got jammed by shredded economic activity, who could be sure we were not falling into some new Dark Age? That didn’t feel implausible; and surely not just to me.

But Broadway has since revived; and seeing it now, changed but flourishing with vivacity, makes me feel finally, unreservedly safe to (metaphorically) let out a breath long held in from a sense of foreboding.

Perhaps withstanding the Pandemic – whether we, or loved ones got sick, or were lost to it – may now help us more consciously appreciate just being alive, rather than gravitate back to some materialist tunnel vision of what we lack. When forced to face an alternative like early death, we sure as Hell didn’t like it. A healthy Epiphany that, even if set in motion by a health calamity?

So now I will invoke memories of my handicapped/restored knee, to focus on all there is to give Thanks for in my life. Our individual worlds may not have been as luxuriant as Talleyrand’s, but COVID (during which we all largely lost ‘unrestricted freedom of action,’ as I did with my knee injury) certainly gave us a taste of just how bitter our spheres could become. Also perhaps reason to consider if our pre-Pandemic discontents were proportionate.

All of us who survived this catastrophe are still mortal, so we will pass away eventually. Humanity has faced worse misfortunes than COVID, but none has snuffed out the illumination of our species’ consciousness, and it will not be extinguished when we too are gone, for we are all part of a Continuity greater than our collective Individuality. The ‘Great Chain of Being’ will continue to unwind fundamentally as it should, even as we each choose to play a positive, or a harmful, part in that process.  

Accepting this requires resignation, but this premise also yields some comfort: We are all sparks of an energy that will not just vanish after us. If acquiescing to this cannot dispel the melancholy of our mortality, it may at least shine a bright corona around the edges of its shadow, as the Sun does behind the Moon during an eclipse: The Light will never actually be gone.

And by making life ‘sweeter’ for anyone – making the world in general less harsh – we shall make it less so for ourselves. (One way of doing so might be accepting that workers in COVID-devastated industries deserve a decent living wage they didn’t always get, paid for in our higher charges for their labor. That is putting money where one’s mouth is, in espousing a kinder, fairer culture and society.)

My city, Chicago, is not widely thought of as a gentle place. Yet a natural reassurance can be sensed in its ambience, the promise of plenty inherent in a patch of Earth where a blue freshwater sea laps at soil so rich the first French explorers here thought they had found the Garden of Eden. Land from which thriving human activity now sprouts, ready to calm any who listen, with a wordless whisper: Don’t fret too much; if all else seems to fail, Nature can provide. And the world will unfold as it should.

If such a whisper may be heard in a place often seen as being lackluster as is Chicago, perhaps you, dear reader, will find that some comparable version may sprout wherever you call home, too.

But experiencing that may be more a matter of yielding than pursuing. Trying to ensnare something as unquantifiable as a tranquil aura may be like trying to seize iridescent mist with your hands; it will just flow through your fingers. Perhaps you must just let its presence steal over you. Although this runs against our culture’s ideal of self-realization, it may be that bliss does not come when bidden, but when it finds us ready for it.

For me, a ‘blissful,’ restorative sensation, which soothes yet strengthens, is present in Scarlatti’s exquisite song, ‘Gia’ il Sole dal Gange,’ ‘The Sun Shines Brightly on the Ganges’ (a glorious performance is provided below), whose imagery also reminds me of glittering Lake Michigan. This music’s comely merriment seems so detached from much of our human domain’s upheaval as to assert resolutely that there is always – if we look – more to our world than ‘upheaval.’

Perhaps listening to it will help you feel the same.

And if you do so, please also ponder this cycle: Sorrow goes and Joy comes – and vice-versa. We should reflexively seek to overcome hardship if possible, but should not be despondent that it even exists. The same power that spawned COVID also offers us means to make surviving it very much worth our struggles to do so, tantalizing us with sparkling images like the Ganges, Lake Michigan, the faces and voices of loved ones, or whatever makes existence brighter – like a passing eclipse – for each one of us.

Such things are every bit as much present on our Earth as are reasons for sorrow and despair. The Pandemic has been a global nightmare, but if we waken from it having learned to be thankful for graces we previously ignored, then our experience may be like a broken joint (as with my injured knee) that may emerge from a daunting trial better than it was before.