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This is not unprecedented
My alma mater, Williams College, just sent out an update to alums about canceling commencement and reunion events this summer.
This line from the college president’s message caught my eye:
My heart goes out especially to the class of 1970, whose own senior spring term was canceled due to protests over the bombing of Cambodia, and who are now having their 50th reunion disrupted by a global pandemic.
So yes, some of this coronavirus situation is unprecedented — but maybe only for my generation, or people in the USA, or other specific subsets.
For humanity, it is not the first time we’ve encountered a pandemic, that we’ve had to band together (by staying apart) to protect human life, or faced disruptions to our routines and plans.
It is disappointing, and it is hard. But it is not new. And it doesn’t need to be new to be horrific or taken seriously.
The benefit of it not being new (besides it having been more preventable, but that’s another topic) is that we can look to others who have experienced similar situations.
What did they do when semesters were cancelled due to war and illness? How did people cope with influenza and plagues in the past? How did society and humanity recover afterwards?
Of course our world today feels and is different. But I suspect that now that we’ve begun to accept the realities of the current situation, we can also look back into our past and reach out to those who’ve experienced it to see what our options and opportunities are for the present and future.
