"I Pledge Allegiance to Arrogance and Ignorance"

We all have our Covid pandemic war stories. Talk to anyone and it’s a challenge to not have a heavy heart or shed a tear. Yet, I’m sure that many stories can’t come close to what front-line Covid healthcare workers have had to endure for the last (almost) two years.

Whenever I can, I try to read these stories and, the other day, I read this Business Insider article about Andrew Hudson, an ICU nurse who quit after 19 intense months of working the front lines.

His experiences are harrowing, but two things jumped out at me. First,

        In the early months [of the pandemic], Hudson bagged up dead patients and brought them 

        to the morgue…What’s worse, to protect morticians from exposure, Hudson gauzed and

        taped the eyelids, nostrils, and mouth of his dead patients. "It felt macabre," he said. "It 

        was pretty grim to look at and felt like this feels kind of medieval in a way.”

It breaks my heart that he and others were put in such a position. So little was known in those early phases. Can you imagine being in a room with a corpse and having to gauze and tape eyelids, nostrils, and mouths? You don’t know the person, but you know the person had to die alone. You know a family lost a loved one and they couldn’t say good-bye much less have a funeral and, yet, there you are, a stranger, covering a dead person’s eyes, nose, and mouth.

This made my anger rise. Anger for all the workers forced to stare into a wall of death on a daily and nightly basis. Anger for all the families who lost loved ones and couldn’t have a funeral. Anger because I know there are people out there who doubt that someone like Hudson experienced what he described convinced that he made it all up. (I consistently see doubt of people’s personal experiences on the Next Door Neighbor App.) Anger that there are people (still!) who think that Covid is “just like the flu” and that somehow, in any given time, flu deaths are equal to Covid deaths. This, by the way, underscores how worthless our education system is,  but that’s another blog rant.

I can only imagine how the horrors of Covid will haunt these front-line workers for the rest of their lives while others will merrily roam their way through life thinking, “Didn’t happen if it didn’t happen to me!” Makes me think of a NICU nurse I knew who, at the beginning of the pandemic, spread false information about how only symptomatic people should quarantine and everything should remain open like it all supposedly happened during the 1918 Spanish (really American) Flu pandemic. Not only is this untrue, but I asked this person and this person’s co-workers and friends if they understood what “asymptomatic” meant. My question never got answered, but plenty of “you sheep”-type comments were flung my way. Once again, proving our education system’s worthless especially in the sciences.

The second thing that Hudson said which jumped out at me was:

Last year also brought out aggression from patients he hadn’t seen before…Patients’ families 

        would tell Hudson to not intubated [sic] dying patients and instead give them the ivermectin, a 

        parasite killer that does not work against Covid-19. “We just feel like we’ve vanished, like we 

        can’t do anything,” he added. Shortly before leaving his job, Hudson recalled coming home 

        from his shifts feeling defeated.

If people don’t believe Covid is real, why are they seeking help at a hospital when they get sick?

OR,

If they are seeking help at a hospital, why are they then telling doctors and nurses what to do?

STAY HOME SINCE YOU BELIEVE YOU KNOW BETTER.

Re-read the line above. Keep re-reading it. 

The arrogance is astounding and it is this arrogance that is contributing to the collapse of our healthcare industry. We are losing people like Hudson in droves because humans can only take so much abuse from the Arrogant and Ignorant.

My biggest wish for humanity is for people to see how connected we are. We carry germs. We carry bacteria. We carry viruses and we spread these germs, bacteria, and viruses to each other. I am humble enough to understand that much about science, and not arrogant enough to believe I know more than a virologist, someone who’s dedicated their life to the study of viruses. Part of my responsibility as a human being is to help humanity and that includes listening to what the majority of scientists, researchers, and experts say on a topic. This is called consensus. The lesson on what is majority vs minority seems to be one many people skipped.

The choices made by the Arrogant and Ignorant make my life harder right now. It also makes front-line nurses’ and doctors’ lives harder, but what the Arrogant and Ignorant fail to realize is that, ultimately, his or her choices make it also harder for him or herself. In the end, it becomes our collective story and scar. We could be helping each other, and yet….

We are forever changed in both good and bad. We are forever scathed. We are forever scarred. The biggest question is how do we handle the aftermath of all this change and all this pain. My secret wish is that we would come out of this working towards improving our education system, but that wish is crumbling with all these bans on books and theories. My not-so-secret wish is that we come out of this kinder. I have to admit that I feel the world’s candle on that wish is growing faint. But it’s not out. Not yet. Please keep it lit.

Dear Parents, Stop

We're drowning. In so many different ways, we're drowning. From climate change to chemical dependency to the disappearance of critical thinking skills. How long do we humans have left?

Over the last 20 years of teaching, one of the most disturbing trends I have witnessed among parents is the pressure put on children to be perfect, to be the best, to be the most competitive in order to attain whatever recognition possible. It is almost impossible, I think, for us to not place our insecurities on to our children, but we must be aware of when we are doing it. I also think it's a fallacy to believe that our children are carbon copies of us. They may look like us genetically, and they may have some inherited traits, but they are 100% their own people. To push our own insecurities on to them is inflicting more damage than we can imagine. I'm not a psychologist, but I speak from experience.

My mom's insecurities with relationships, which stem from growing up with a cold mother and an alcoholic father, were pushed on to me convincing me for a long time to be distrustful of men. It took years for me to realize and recognize that each man is an individual. Not all men are assholes. So, let's say you are competitive and feel inadequate unless you win 1st place, you are probably pushing that same insecurity on to your children, teaching them that one has no value unless you are #1, when the true lesson should be that everyone has value regardless. And maybe your child doesn't care to be so competitive. Have you asked? Maybe your child has other interests. Have you asked? Have you had an honest conversation about what your child may want? Adults tend to think kids of all ages have no opinions, but they do. Oh, they do.

At Lithuanian school, for the last 3 years or so, we have had a symposium where the 11th and 12th graders are given the floor to describe about what challenges they feel today's youth face. Every year my heart breaks. Consistently, more than half of the students talk about all the pressures they face from family and school to get good grades, to do well on their SAT, to excel in anything they do, to get into an exceptional university, and to be in as many extra-curricular activities as possible, but to also not forget to have an active and fun social life. I know it affects the wealthy, but are you truly surprised by the college admissions scandal that hit last year?

Every single student mentioned that their days often begin before 6am, how they rush to school (some starting their first class by 7am), have classes until 3pm or so, then sports or other lessons, come home early evening, and then sit down for 3-4 hours of homework. Many of them aren't getting to bed until midnight, sometimes later, only to start the day again before 6am. Teenagers should be getting 8-10 hours of sleep. I have yet to meet one that gets that much sleep. Guess what happens to the brain and body when you don't get enough sleep? I think there's enough evidence of the negative effects.

These kids are 16 and 17 years old.

These kids are overworked and tired.

These kids are desperate and sinking.

Read again: These kids are sinking.

Again: KIDS.

These. Are. Kids. And they're drowning.

The more popular social media becomes, the more apps, the more cyber inter-connectedness, the more pressure to be perfect and the deeper the dive below the surface gets.

What are we doing?

According to Business Insider, when analyzing education world-wide, the US ranked

            #6 in 1990 and now

            #27 in 2016.

In math, out of 71 countries, the US ranked

            #38 and

In science, the US ranked

            #24.

What happened over 30 years? We started spending less money on education than other countries even though student enrollment increased. We do not value education. Yet, we sure like to pile on the pressure to excel in it.

What in the actual hell?

Something has to give. When we live out of balance, we get sick. In some way shape or form, we get sick. Maybe it's emotionally, maybe it's physically, maybe it's psychologically. We are not meant for all this pressure. We are not meant to separate ourselves from each other. We are not meant to separate ourselves from nature. We are not meant to separate ourselves from creativity and thought and adventure. We are not meant to separate ourselves from boredom. Being the best and having the most gets you nothing in the end. No amount of awards, money, or accolades will get you out of death. Those awards, the money, and the accolades will be thrown away, distributed, and forgotten.

My wish for people is to see their children as individuals with their own strengths and weaknesses, and help them build on their strengths. Don't force your missed dreams on them. Listen to them and try not to take their weaknesses and mistakes as some sort of failure on your part. We all have strengths and weaknesses, both of which are worthy and valuable to work on. Our strengths and weaknesses are our own - like our thumbprint - and they bring us lessons from which we can learn, if we are open to them. Guide your children to find theirs without you tainting them with your own skewed view of things.

Our children are drowning and they are begging for help. We are the adults. We should know better. We should guide better. We should live better. 

Let. Them. Be. Free.