Opinion

Chris Donnelly: Goodness shines through at a time of unprecedented anxiety

Chris Donnelly

Chris Donnelly

Chris is a political commentator with a keen eye for sport. He is principal of a Belfast primary school.

A nurse wears protective clothing at a drive through facility to test for coronavirus operating at Antrim Area Hosptial
A nurse wears protective clothing at a drive through facility to test for coronavirus operating at Antrim Area Hosptial A nurse wears protective clothing at a drive through facility to test for coronavirus operating at Antrim Area Hosptial

Our definition and understanding of what constitutes a key worker in society is something that should endure beyond the current crisis.

When things got real, health and the basic need for food and drink mattered most as we were reduced to aspiring to merely scale the lowest layers of Maslow’s pyramid of needs.

Many of those with little are expected to do so much. Our cleaners, with or without adequate personal protective equipment, continue to perform the essential role of neutralising the invisible killer whilst those involved in food supply and distribution continue to answer the call regardless of concerns for themselves and their own family in workplaces where they are vulnerable to bosses and members of the public failing to respect the need for adequate social distancing.

Minimum wage employees, labelled unskilled in the cold worlds of finance and business, are in the frontline alongside the blessed health workers, answering humanity’s cries and pleas in defiance of risk to their own health and wellbeing. It is the last who will be first indeed.

There is something utterly humbling about the sight of medical professionals and others continuing to run towards the danger with little regard for their own health.

The list of Italian doctors who have died treating the affected continues to grow, climbing beyond 30 on a sobering trajectory that will inevitably claim many more lives. Others who serve people during times of need have also borne the brunt in Italy. More than 60 priests have died to date there, including 53 year old Fr Paolo Camminati, renowned for his youth ministry and service to the poor.

A quarter of the planet’s population has ground to a halt in this unprecedented crisis, and governments have had to react by promising to intervene to the tune of trillions and billions of dollars, pounds and euros, providing families and businesses with funding to prevent a complete breakdown in society.

It is an awful time of stress, strain and turmoil for so many. A parent I spoke with last week broke down mid-conversation, the weight of concern for the health of loved ones compounded by a genuine fear that the employment situation facing her and her husband would leave the family in ruins.

It is to be hoped that the public’s tolerance threshold for ignorance, arrogance and complacency will be raised in these days of heightened anxiety. Donald Trump and Boris Johnson were united early in the crisis by the fact that both saw fit to publicly dismiss the gravity of the unfolding emergency by making deeply irresponsible comments, but it is the gross negligence of the initial strategy adopted by the British government and continuing to be articulated by Donald Trump that should indict them.

The World Health Organisation has warned that the United States could yet be the epicentre for this crisis. And yet Trump persists, now offering the suggestion that the churches be filled once again for Easter Sunday less than a fortnight away just as the curve trends sharply upwards in a US ill-equipped to deal with the catastrophe due to the shameful failure to devise a programme of universal health care in the world’s wealthiest and most powerful nation.

Yet in times of crisis, it is the goodness in humanity that shines through in words and gestures, large and small. Last Monday, a stranger stopped to hand my elderly father a bag of groceries on his daily walk outside the home in which he has been exiled with my mother for the past fortnight. On Tuesday, I approached the counter of a local shop with coffees for classroom assistants and teachers in school to supervise children of key workers only to be told that a parent had spotted me and paid for them in advance.

I have spent more time involved in quality conversations with relatives over Skype in the past few weeks than I have in person for quite some time. How we choose to organise our lives becomes our normality. Being busy can be a state of mind unconsciously leading to the long-fingering of many things which take for granted time and fate, a fool’s gamble.

Alex Kane, from this parish and many others, wisely tweeted during the week a quote from the movie, Mr Nobody: “I’m not afraid of dying, I’m afraid I haven’t been alive enough.”

Life is on pause for so many of us. When we press play again, there will be a lot of living to be done.