Lately, I have been thinking about heart rhythm. My beloved daughter encountered a serious arrhythmia in the last trimester of her recent pregnancy. There is a new life but also one in peril.
Because the aberrant heart beat has coincided with the disruption to our healthcare system from the coronavirus pandemic, a cardiac ablation, which searches for and destroys the misfiring heart tissue, has been postponed.
One alternative remedy for correcting an arrhythmia is a cardioversion in which the heart is stopped and then an electrical shock applied to restart it. The hope with such a procedure is to establish a healthy beat that will pump life sustaining blood to the body.
In a metaphorical sense, the tiny coronavirus has brought about the first phase of cardioversion on a global scale. Modern existence has come to an abrupt stop at a time when not just my daughter but also the entire human species seems to be experiencing an arrhythmia in healthy functioning.
This pause in the pace of our modern times provides an interval in which those of us not dealing with an existential threat can consider the nature of the restart. How might we reframe our relationship to Self and Others, the utilization and distribution of resources, our views of life and death, and our approach to governance? Let us hope that humanity does not squander the opportunity that fate has given us.