Resilience and Meaning-Making Amid the COVID-19 Epidemic in China

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is a powerful border experience awakening us to our existential predicament. Such a predicament includes transience and impermanence, unpredictability, emptiness (existential vacuum), and the interdependence of life and death. The anxiety aroused by the pandemic can awaken us to an ontological mode of existence in which we are authentic, aware, responsible, and transcendent. The Chinese idiom reminds us that crises contain both danger and opportunity. Thus, this article explores how out of this awareness can emerge resilience, creativity, and meaning-making in the midst of confinement, isolation, and suffering.

In midst of the COVID-19 epidemic in China, I was invited to provide supervision and support for a group of volunteer therapists as they have banded together to provide psychological comfort and care for those in need. This article is an edited amalgamation of two separate essays written as an encouragement to this 200 plus group of dedicated hotline volunteers based out of Wuhan China. Many of these therapists belonged to the Institute of Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychologies (Wuhan Xin Zhan, 人本/超个人心理研究中心, 武汉心斋). The weekly group supervision is still taking place as of the writing of this article in March 2020.

The first essay was written right after Chinese New Year 2020 (January 25), during the height of the COVID-19 outbreak in China where Wuhan and numerous other cities were under lockdown and all of China was practicing self-distancing. Sadly, such social distancing was taking place during a time of year for returning to family and loved ones. Many people were forced to cancel trips home as a result of the virus. To understand the mood at the time, imagine being quarantined or engaging in social distancing during the Thanksgiving or Christmas Holidays. The Lunar New Year holidays were supposed to be the largest migration taking place in the world. Instead, trains normally filled to capacity had three to five people per carriage. Large cities were turned into ghost towns. The same thing is happening now in the United States as Times Square is deserted and Disneyland is closed during Spring Break. Kafkaesque and surreal.

As I sit here writing this (first) reflection essay, I am aware that it is the second day after Spring Festival (January 27, 2020) and the Year of the Rat. Spring festival is a celebration of the end of a season as we transition from winter into spring. It is also the end of the year and this year being the Year of the Rat, signifies the beginning of another 12-year cycle of the Chinese Zodiac. So it is a time of transitions. The irony is of course that we are rather immobile during the transience of this holiday season because of the COVID-19. How troublesome and inconvenient.

On the other hand, is there ever a convenient time for suffering and sickness to befall us? It is times like this that we realize that we are not in control of things as much as we like. We would like to think that we are in control but we are not. Certainly, we need a modicum of control to live our lives but I am reminded of a popular saying in English which reminds us that Men Plan, God Laughs. I have plans to visit my loved ones this week and then travel to the Philippines to conduct a retreat. The possibility that these plans are in jeopardy is not at all a laughing matter. It is troublesome and anxiety provoking. How risky will it be for me to travel? I do not know. The news changes daily. What is funny and perhaps even absurd is the illusion that things will always go according to my plan. Intellectually of course, I know this is not the case. However, in my heart, I loathe to surrender myself to this sense of unpredictability even though I know that there is perhaps a grander plan in place.

The Chinese idiom reminds us that crises contain both danger and opportunities. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about inconvenience and much anxiety and uncertainty. It awakened us to our existence. Rollo May reminded us in his book Existence that

Anxiety is not an affect, among other affects such as pleasure or sadness. It is rather an ontological characteristic of man, rooted in his very existence. . . . It is not a peripheral threat which I can take or leave or a reaction which may be classified among other reactions; it is always a threat to the foundations, the center of my existence. Anxiety is the experience of the threat of imminent non-being. (May et al., 1958, p. 50)

Similarly, the UK-based existential psychologist Ernesto Spinelli (1997) wrote that

Existential-phenomenological theory presents us with a view of human existence that places anxiety as its center. It suggests that our experience of living is never certain, never predictable, never secure. Instead, our very embracing of life presents us with all manner of “challenges”: challenges to the meanings we have built up and live by, challenges to the aims and purposes with which we imbue our lives, challenges, indeed, to the very continuation of our existence. Our response to any or all of these challenges can range from the attempt to create a protected environment that will repel any perceived threats to our sense of physical or psychological security, to the undertaking to foster a chaotic lifestyle which, paradoxically, fixes its meaning and purposes upon the unwavering belief that “all is meaningless.” Whatever the response, however, what is significant is that the response itself expresses the stance we take toward our relations with the world. It is, in a sense, our unique “language” through which we engage in dialogue both with ourselves and others. (p. 6)

In the existential framework, anxiety is so inseparable from existence that it has a different connotation from the way anxiety is regarded in other frames of reference. The existential therapist works to alleviate crippling levels of anxiety but not to eliminate it. Life cannot be lived without anxiety. The therapist’s task, as Rollo May teaches, is to reduce anxiety to tolerable levels and then to use the anxiety constructively. May (2013) taught that

What anxiety means is it’s as though the world is knocking at your door, and you need to create. You need to make something. You need to do something. And I think anxiety, thus, is for people who have found their own heart and their own souls. For them it is a stimulus toward creativity, toward courage. It’s what makes us human beings.

One of the ways that anxiety is knocking on my door and thus beseeching me for a response is the writing of this article. It is part of my stance and response to my own existential anxiety that is awakened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Taking my cue from May, writing this essay reminds me that anxiety can be both crippling and empowering. That creativity, not medication is the response to anxiety as it comes knocking on my door.

Indeed, this Spring Festival is quite different from Spring Festivals of the past. It is not quite as festive as before. There is a somberness to the whole experience. A large part of this is due to the anxiety of the times. The somberness brings about some dysphoria and heightens my sense of loneliness and isolation. Normally, I relish the sense of solitude and tranquility that Beijing gifts to me during the Spring Festival Holidays. I enjoy the uncongested emptiness of the city as it affords me time to reflect and write. But along with this appreciation, I am awakened to the coexisting isolation that is part of the emptiness. Yet I know that I am not alone in this because this year, I see more lights on in residences that were empty before. I realize that I am not the only migrant worker who is far from home. Furthermore, I cannot imagine what the people of Wuhan and other cities must be experiencing for they are quarantined and separated from their loved ones and face the prospect of a very uncertain near future. This brings to home for me that isolation is indeed an unavoidable part of existence. Yet ironically at the same time, knowing that I am not alone in experiencing my isolation brings a degree of comfort. So while I feel a strong sense of helplessness toward those who are quarantined, I want them to know that they are not alone in their isolation.

Taoists, existential philosophers, and psychologists teach me that life and death are not sequential but simultaneous and interdependent. It is not so much that death follows life, spring follows winter. Instead, the seeds of life are buried in the barren trees of my nearby park and the leaves that drop from their branches will fertilize the foliage that will arrive in the Spring. This reminds me of the quote by the French existential philosopher Albert Camus (1970) that “in the depth of winter, I found within myself an invincible summer” (p. 169). People and life are resilient. One of the main questions that is being researched right now is how virulent and resilient is COVID-19? Amid this investigation, let us not forget that people can be exceptionally resilient as well. Having a sustaining meaning to live for, the vast majority of people are able to endure great suffering and will bounce back from trauma and suffering. Comparisons are made between the SARS crisis in 2003 and even the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan. I recall images of rows on rows of temporary housing set up for the displaced survivors near the center of the earthquake. Most of them have now reconstituted their lives though I am sure the scars from the earthquake remain. I lived and worked in Southern China during the SARS crisis and recall the contrast between the people in Hong Kong who were nearly all masked with the people near Guangzhou who were not. Now as I walk around Beijing, the majority of the people are wearing masks. We have learned and now relate to death anxiety differently. The SARS epidemic tested and strengthened our resilience. I had in friend in Hong Kong who flew for Cathay, which nearly went bankrupt as the result of the SARS epidemic. Out of necessity, the airlines give him a choice of leaving the airlines or remain for a significant reduction in salary. Lean times indeed. It was a painful time for my friend to ponder how great was his love of flying or perhaps it was a time to move on to a different career. He decided to remain with the airlines. In the midst of the crisis, he found within himself an invincible summer, for never did he believe he would be so severely tested or how little he could actually live on.

The SARS epidemic left its marks on me as well. I was traveling between Taiwan and Southern China, the epicenter for the SARS Epidemic at that time for work. Consequently, I carried on a long-distance relationship with my girlfriend who remained in Taiwan. As the SARS epidemic intensified, we were forced to be separated due to the fact that I would have been quarantined for a period of time were I to return to Taiwan. This extensive period of separation put an end to our relationship. It is tempting to blame SARS for our breakup. But it is more accurate to say that our relationship was not resilient enough to survive SARS. The breakup of the relationship took place during the forced separation. She told me via the phone that she had found someone else. I remember taking numerous long walks as I worked through the pain and grief of the end of that relationship. Yet I too survived the breakup and the SARS epidemic. We are all much more resilient than we think and looking back, I now know that there is a grander plan in place.

In the midst of unpredictability and isolation, I am learning more about surrendering to the mystery that is beyond me. Let us take this day by day and cherish what we have. I cannot imagine what it is like to have lost a loved one to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet I’m reminded that on a daily basis, we have all lost loved ones to disease and old age. It is not only the COVID-19 pandemic that leaves us quarantined, inconvenienced and unable to travel. A severe cold will do the same, not to mention cancer. I write this not to belittle the seriousness of the current crisis. That would be foolish. Instead, what I wish to share is how the current crisis has at times awakened me from what the German existential philosopher Martin Heidegger (1962) termed my everyday mode of existence to a more ontological mode of existence. One in which I marvel not about the way things are but that they are. A mode of existence where I am authentic, responsible for choice, aware and transcendent. Embracing my possibilities and limits; facing absolute freedom and nothingness—and is anxious in the face of them (Yalom, 1980).

What has been the most challenging aspects of the current COVID-19 pandemic for you? For some, it has been the devastating losses that they have endured. Is there any meaning to their suffering and loss? This is an eternal question that bedevils us all. For the majority of us, the challenge has been how to live our lives during this crisis? If we broaden the scope of our reflection, the challenge and opportunity have always been, how to live out this precious gift of life that we have been given? It is just that this current crisis has brought this challenge into a more immediate focus.

For many, myself included, the living out our lives during this current crisis has been compared with a jailhouse experience. Though if we are honest, the experience is more like that of a house arrest as opposed to a full-on prison experience. But do not tell that to the thousands of individuals were confined to the Diamond Princess previously docked in Yokohama, Japan. Many of them were going out of their minds and regard their cruise ship as a floating prison. For a fortunate few, they have a balcony to take in fresh air. Others paid more for a small window sea view for which I imagine they are now quite grateful for. Then there are those who are locked in internal cabins without a view. How intolerable. And all of them are residing in rooms that are slightly larger than a jail cell. But even so, they are living in more comfort than the vast crew who are living below the waterline in quarters that are much more compact.

As for the rest of us, we can now empathize more with those who are incarcerated. Even though to varying degrees, we are free to leave our residences to go outside, doing so is not without risk. So for the majority of us, we are confined to our homes with lots of time on our hands. Is this a good thing or not? How will we look back on this experience? How have you been passing your time? Another one of these basic existential questions if we slow down to think about it.

Shawshank Redemption is a movie that I have shown often to help educate people to the concept of freedom, understood from an existential perspective. The movie is on many people’s all-time favorite list. The movie takes place in Shawshank prison where the prisoners have the same dilemma that all of us are facing now, namely how to pass their time. Consider the following dialogue from the movie narrated by Red, the character played by the Morgan Freedman: “Prison time is slow time. Sometimes it feels like stop-time. So you do what you can to keep going . . . ” “In prison, a man will do most anything to keep his mind occupied.” “Some fellas collect stamps. Others build matchstick houses. Andy built a library” (Glotzer et al, 1994). How are you passing your time?

What the prisoners at Shawshank Prison are facing is the same thing that we are all facing: Existential Vacuum. The concept of existential vacuum is advanced by Victor Frankl, the founder of Logotherapy. Frankl was a psychiatrist who knows a thing or two about prison time. He survived the concentration camps but lost his entire family to the holocaust. In his best-selling book, Man’s Search for Meaning Frankl (1985) wrote,

At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal’s behavior is embedded and by which it is secured (such security, like Paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. Think Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden). No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism). (p. 128)

Given how the pandemic is being managed by the various governments of the global community now, I am beginning to appreciate the complexity of this dialectic between conformism/totalitarianism and freedom and individuality. Having been educated and brought up in the West, I naturally had a strong reaction against the “draconian” measures of involuntary quarantine and confinement enforced by the Chinese government. However, as China begins to stabilize with Italy experiencing an escalating higher death rate, I am beginning to appreciate the situational necessity of surrendering the pursuit of one’s individual freedom for the common good. My friends in China shared their observation with me that compared to the West, the majority of the Chinese population is more obedient, a Confucian virtue. Yet obedience has generally held a negative connotation for me. However, living through this current pandemic has added a layer of complexity to my thinking. This is another gift that COVID-19 has given me in the midst of this pandemic.

Both conformism and totalitarianism were powerfully portrayed in Shawshank Redemption. Andy Dufresne, the protagonist in the movie serves as a beacon for us as to how to deal with one’s existential vacuum. Ironically, landing in jail set Andy free. Shawshank prison was his redemption. It awakened him to his existence and helped him find himself and his purpose in life. Might it be too much to ask the same of COVID-19?

According to Frankl, there is nothing in the world that would so effectively help one to survive even the worse conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche (2009): “If you have your why? for life, then you can get along with almost any how” (p. 58). In Frankl’s Nazi concentration camp experience, he could see that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive. So as many of us are struggling to come up with how we will pass our time, have we found the why for which we are struggling? As for me, as aforementioned, I have tried my best to take advantage of this extended time of solitude to work on additional writing and video lecture projects. And I am embracing my nerdiness, for in addition to catching up on movies and videos that I have compiled in my “To-Watch” List, I also enjoy producing educational videos. Some play video games; I enjoy producing educational videos. Is this the best use of my time?

Consider the following thought experiment proposed by the well-known existential philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche. In his book The Gay Science, Nietzsche (1974) posed a challenge: What if you were to live the identical life again and again throughout eternity—how would that change you?

What if some day or night, a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterable small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!” Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: “You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.” If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are, or perhaps crush you. (pp. 273-274)

What Nietzsche proposed as a thought experiment is to some extent being actualized now. Given the limitations imposed through the practice of self-quarantine, I find that I am living pretty much the same day over and over again without knowing when it will end. What Nietzsche is challenging us to think about or reflect on now is, how am I finding it such that I am living the same day over and over again? We often hear the phrase “to live every day as if it was your last.” Nietzsche’s iteration is, can I truly be happy to live the same day over a thousand times? For me, the experience has not been as divine or blissful as Nietzsche proposed. I enjoy writing and video editing, but frankly it has gotten old and stale. Not that I would make other choices for writing and video editing is my form of building a library in prison. But at the same time, I yearn to go and play tennis and resume my ballroom dance lessons—pastime activities that I have taken for granted before. Similarly, I am itching to travel abroad, especially since my Spring Festival Retreat in the Philippines was canceled. The funny thing is, if I were not so confined and restricted, I probably would simply choose to stay home and pass my days with the same routines that I am basically engaged in now. However, the limitation of an experience increases the enjoyment of that experience. It is more meaningful and desirable because it is limited. We all desire what we cannot have. There is an existential abyss between I Want and I Must. Now that I “must” stay home, my desire (want) to get away from home is ever increased. If I had no such limitations, my experience of staying at home remains unreflected, meaningless, and taken for granted. This is the gift of confinement, limitation and what death awareness can bring to us. If we are willing to reflect, perhaps this is the hidden gift concealed in the current COVID-19 pandemic. Whatever the case, I know I am going to enjoy that first pizza I have (insert your favorite thing that is being kept from you during this crisis) when all this is over. Until then, let us all build our libraries in the midst of confinement.