neighbor against unmasked one, creating a fertile
petri dish to grow as-yet undiscovered brands of
mistrust and misconception.
The thing about history is this: Sometimes we
talk about “now” as if it were the culmination of
all that came before — the actual destination of
everything. What we often fail to consider is that
“now” is just another junction along the track,
another waystation en route to the next thing
and the next and the next.
That goes for the “now” of March 2020, yes.
But it also applies to the “now” of March 2022
as well. Looking back on the uniquely strange
and bedeviling year of 2020 is useful — you try
to learn from what came before — but it also
affords the chance to think about something
else: Two years later, how will we look at right
now? How will we take the measure of what
we are doing two years after it all began? It this
thing anywhere near done? And what happens
when it is?
“Who are we after this? Who are we after dealing
with this situation that we’ve never dealt with
before?” Hilary Fussell Sisco, a professor at
Quinnipiac University who studies how people
communicate in troubled moments, said
precisely two years ago Saturday. “You find out
who you are when a crisis hits.”
Have we?