Transplanting and Sustaining: Covid-19 Special Issue

More Than Just Surviving
Sharmaine Koh
By the time Spring Break came
around, the general mood that seemed
to hover oppressively over the campus
was exhaustion. We all looked forward
to the space that those two-weeks
would afford us to breathe and gather
our bearings before plunging back into
the relentless rhythm of academic life.
All around, people were telling me to
hang in there. I was telling people to
hang in there. Most times it felt like
I was getting tossed about in the sea,
and the only thing I was hanging on
to was a rotten plank. The shore was
just a hundred feet away: tantalizingly
close, frustratingly far.
These days, the global pandemic
might make our academic woes seem
laughably trivial. Many of us would
give anything to trade the fears and
stresses of disruption, infection, social
isolation, loss of support and certainty,
for the simpler pressures of academic
labour. But in our vigilant handwashing,
Zoomer-U-a-meme-ing, miserable
self-quarantining, there is that
same sense of struggle against forces
quite beyond our control. I’m still
hanging on to that rotten plank. The
waves just seem to be rougher. I focus
on just staying afloat. I know that this
is all many of my peers can focus on
doing now. Without the support structures
of campus and community, it’s a
terrifying time to be alive, and just surviving—just
getting by—is a condition
that is as inescapable as it is stifling.
These days, all we do is survive. It’s
hard enough to think about living well,
let alone thriving.
What’s the distinction? Perhaps survival
might be best understood as
continuing to exist—staying alive—in
spite of an environment of stress and
danger. It makes no inroads beyond
the bare minimum. It’s you hanging
on to a rotten plank in the middle of
a rough ocean, just afloat. Flourishing
and thriving, in contrast, points
to an “optimal range of human functioning,”
full of goodness, creativity,
growth, resilience. The sense of human
flourishing that Aristotle gestured
toward. It’s getting on that plank and
surfing, Moana-style, granted that’s a
ridiculously tall order in the face of the
most fearsome waves.
Exhaustion is symptomatic of the survivalist
condition. We are constantly
at war against conditions, whether we
choose fight or flight. In the face of
stress and danger much of what motivates
us is fear, and it is all-consuming.
Whether it is fear of failure, fear
of rejection, fear of uncertainty, fear
of loss, fear of radical loneliness, a fear
that other people in our lives might get
hurt… fear is an exhausting condition
to bear. It tires us out, eats us hollow,
and in the process leaves little room for
love. We survive, but we are in the true
sense of the word, barely alive. We
might think that our survival mindset
is temporary: we only need to ride out
the crisis. We find coping mechanisms.
We try to recover normalcy in our daily
routines. But the desperate conditions
of the coronavirus crisis, I think,
is less a rupture in our way of life and
more a revelation of a condition we’ve
long found ourselves in.
And yet can we be blamed? For many
of our brothers and sisters whose lived
realities are far from privileged, it appears
as if there is no choice between
these two states of being. Insofar as
the survivalist condition propagates
endless fear that in turn ensures an
endless state of exhaustion, flourishing
remains a pipe dream. In a world that
has fallen far from perfection, we cannot
change the conditions of stress and
danger that we are subject to. Human
suffering manifests itself on a spectrum
of problem sets to pandemics, and everything
else in between. Might it be
only human to struggle for our existence,
driven by fear of absolute and
utter annihilation by the crushing forces
that surround us on a daily basis?
But I know that I am fortunate, as are
my Christian brothers and sisters. We
can escape this languishing condition
of survival because we are able to
eradicate the forces of fear that drive
and maintain the survival instinct.
Perfect love casts out all fear. One
need only count the number of times
the Bible invokes: “Do not be afraid!”
Psalm 23:4 defeats the notion that survival
is all that is possible in the face
of utter annihilation: “Even though I
walk through the valley of the shadow
of death, I will fear no evil, for you are
with me; your rod and your staff, they
comfort me.” What beauty lies in this
radical freedom in the face of terror!
Some say that religion is a coping
mechanism. After all, “I’m still alive
but I’m barely breathing / Just prayin’
to a God that I don’t believe in,” is a
sentiment The Script famously sang.
Maybe—maybe it’s another one of
those methods of survival, a distraction
conjured by the desperate to convince
themselves that they aren’t alone
in a world set adrift.
But if coping means only surviving,
then one need only look at the fruits
of faith to see that believing in God
enables more than just coping. In the
direst situations, allowing God into
the picture allows us to go beyond our
fears and our survival instincts. We go
beyond—we imagine not just escaping
death but triumphing over it. There is
breathing space to not just survive, but
flourish, freed from our human limitations
because we are enabled by God,
who looks upon our smallness and, out
of overflowing love, unfailingly comes
to our help. Deuteronomy 31:6 promises
that faith in God’s existence guarantees
that we never have to face the
prospect of abandonment and lonely
struggle: “for the Lord your God goes
with you; he will never leave or forsake
you.”
This same love and solidarity that
God demonstrates to his children is
what will move us from merely staying
alive to fully and richly flourishing. We
need remember that access to a state
of flourishing remains distinctly unequal
in our world today, as a result of
myriad social, political, and economic
conditions. Therein lies the impetus to
reach out to each other in love, particularly
in this time of gripping fear, and
beyond this time of Lent. Not everyone
has or wants to have a helper in
God—realities that we must respect.
Then it is all the more a Christian
duty, having been freed from fear and
conditions of mere survival by divine
love, to reach out and enable fellow human
beings, Christian or not, do more
than just survive, so that at least others
might have a helper in us. We are, after
all, his body. So in the midst of the
stormy seas, take courage in the Lord
and keep your head above water. Freed
from the oppressive fear, paddle your
way over to your neighbours. Reach
out, lash together your wooden planks.
Stronger, braver, and not alone, we’ll
all make it to shore, and do much more
than just survive.
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