Headed into Holy Week, the pope is urging us to look to the real heroes.
He presents a strong point: In Fort Worth, the ambulance provider, MedStar [which has declared me a media hero on two separate occasions. But this isn’t about me.] is responding to dozens of potential COVID-19 calls every day.
Loyal Scaiaholics will recall I started feeling ways about things in a series of posts last week. The pope’s reminder is important to hear: police officers, firefighters, paramedics, doctors and nurses may not grab headlines like “So and So Many People Tested Positive Today,” but they do put themselves in harm’s way every time they respond to a call.
I may never have mentioned this before, but loyal Scaiaholics will recall how I’ve cheated death. I may be indestructible [Note from Alan’s primary care physician: He is most definitely not indestructible. And lay off the Blue Bell, man.], but that doesn’t stop you from sometimes wondering what it’s all about.
For instance, when I lived in SuperOregon, the public relations guy for the hospital in town would pitch story ideas. The hospital only has a few dozen beds, but it’s the area’s trauma center and offers all the specialty areas of one of those big city hospitals in StandardOregon.
I bring all this up because one day, I was interviewing him and a couple of doctors on the morning show about some new treatment. I asked if they were worried something might go wrong with a new procedure, and since they had just started offering it, they wouldn’t have a standard response, so it could be fatal.
“Life is fatal,” the hospital’s PR person, Downer McDownerson, explained to me.
He meant, quite reasonably, that something could go wrong anywhere, anytime, like on a Farm to Market road in Wise County. But this isn’t about me. Perhaps unsurprisingly, McDownderson’s analysis left me wondering what it’s all about. So I went and got a book where the author tried to establish the probability that a person-God, the God worshiped in major religions, really exists.
And that, obviously, brings us to Leo Tolstoy.
Tolstoy became gripped with his own impermanence, at one point writing, “These are all words with no meaning.” Clearly, he had never read my blog.
But he had started seeking out his own meaning.
And, gang, maybe that’s our takeaway from his coronavirus rigmarole: We’re starting to worry this is some sort of Logan’s Run situation; we’re getting so caught up with our own impermanence, we’re panicking and trying to stock up now because we know that thing in our hand is going to go off eventually.
We only have so many years. We want that time to be its best, but in the panic of losing our tried-and-true everyday lives, we’re spending our limited time here looking for toilet paper.
An aside: I would have loved a Tolstoy novel in which Anna Karenina and her lover flee to Italy to escape toilet paper rations enacted by the well-to-do of St. Petersburg. But then the train doesn’t have toilet paper either.
I smell a sitcom! I’ve smelled them before:
The F. Scott Fitzgerald quarantine letter wasn’t true, but if you’re struggling with cabin fever, maybe just be thankful you’re not Ernest Hemingway, who spent time in quarantine with his toddler, wife and mistress. I smell a sitcom! https://t.co/yapzFOBf8M
— Alan Scaia (@scaia) April 6, 2020
In conclusion, George Strait really tied the last blog together. I think he could lighten this thing up.
