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When the pandemic hit in March 2020, we could handle it. Live classes were cancelled but faculty made audio talks to share with students.  At that point, the students knew each other, they knew me, I knew them, and I had examinations and  papers so assigning a semester grade was not a problem.  I decided to focus my talks on  important topics and have students write personal reactions to the talks rather than analytical papers.  This worked out  well. 

But when the fall semester rolled around, that was a different ball game.  We had never met as a class.  They did not know me and I did not know them.  I realized I had to give students some philosophical orientation to an unprecedented situation.  

I sent some written encouragements and also gave an orientation on the first day of class.  I told students to consider that in a hundred years people will look back to the time when the whole world was shut down.  Even if you did not ask for this privilege, you  have become players in a drama of unprecedented  significance.  My suggestion was to keep a journal. Write to a future reader you may not even know.   Use this time to help someone else understand our unique age.  I figured if students could stop thinking about themselves and think about someone else, that might help.  

I also told them about Viktor Frankel’s amazing Auschwitz memoir,  Man’s Search for Meaning  The reason this is such an astonishing book, and the reason I read it for a second time in four months, was because Frankel leaves the reader with stunning insights.  

First, he says anyone can find meaning in life no matter how bad it seems.  Even in Auschwitz there is a life worth living.  

In the book, which Frankel wrote in nine days, he tells two stories about his patients. One was of a man whose wife had died.  After two years his grief was as great as the day she died.  Frankel asked what would have happened if he had died first.  The man was horrified.  His wife loved him so much that she would never have recovered.  “So, by surviving you have spared her the grief of mourning forever.”  The man suddenly realized that his survival was a blessing, not a betrayal.    

A second patient was a young woman in a depression.  Frankel asked how old she was.  She said 30.  He said, “No.  You are 80.  You are lying on your death bed and looking back over your life.  Is there anything you see that made your life worth living?” She suddenly realized that there was much meaning in her life, things she had overlooked. 

Frankel says two traps lead us astray: dwelling on the past and dwelling  on the future.  The temptation is to say, “Remote Learning is terrible.  Last semester was great.  I could talk to friends, discuss issues in class, and talk to my professor. This is awful.”  The other danger is to think, “When this is over, everything will be good so I will just get through this catastrophe.”   If you idealize either the past or the future and ignore the present, then you are missing whatever benefits there are in your current life.

Frankel says we have to remember that we have the life we have, not the life we wish we had. But what is uniquely good about living in pandemic?   Before Auschwitz, life was good.  After Auschwitz life was good (for those who survive).  But life IN Auschwitz. How could that be good?  Frankel says even if we know we will not survive, we need to find  meaning in  whatever life we have.  

Is there anything about the pandemic for which we can be grateful?  I am glad that I recorded a semester of lectures.  This podcast project would be much more difficult to start without those.