My 5 Stages of Grief
When I started this writing project, I had great hopes and dreams that this would become something profound and publish-able. However, after reviewing the content, I recognized that this series will function no more than a repository of my thoughts and how I processed the world around me, during the pandemic.
1. Anger
One of the reasons why Albert Camus’ “The Plague” is more relevant nowadays than ever during the 2020 pandemic is how telling it is. “The Plague,” written in June 1947, points to the humanist aspect in Camus’ body of work. The story tells of a mysterious plague terrorizing the town of Oran in French Algeria. Shortly after that, people of Oran found themselves cornered with their mental and physical burdens in a confined space. “The Plague,” with its adept use of syntax and language, tells events as if they were simultaneously happening and finishing. A question that may arise here is that “So what do the title of this writing and Camus’ “The Plague” have anything to do with each other?” To answer that, there is really no use to write about an age group that I am not in-tune with. Instead, I will briefly examine how social discrepancy are built-in components at a young age.
“Our citizens work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich. Their chief interest is in commerce, and their chief aim in life is, as they call it, “doing business.”
When the world was forced back into their homes, there were many conflicting opinions. “How am I supposed to eat? What do I even do? Am I going out of a job?” — these questions are minuscule on the grand list of questions that people ask themselves a few months earlier. Our lives are so intertwined with being productive, successful, rich, and so on. While there has always been a huge gap between the rich and the not-so-rich in our modern society, that same gap was made more apparent in times of hardship. This is where the process of re-humanizing/de-humanizing appears. As the virtual distance between people closes, so will the “wealth exposure.”
“Wealth exposure” is a term I coined on the fly, to refer to how wealth is being flaunted so widely with the emergence of TikTok. Tags like #richboycheck or #privateschoolcheck are flooded with videos of teenagers touring their mansions, huge walk-in closets, and $35k per year schools. If the citizens in the aforementioned quote worked hard to achieve rich-ness, then the characters in these TikToks are nothing more than benefactors of such hard work.
At its core, there is nothing wrong with celebrating the fact that you are born lucky. But given the circumstance where everyone is locked to their homes and the gate to the world is as small as a 5 by 3 window, wealth-flaunting is tone-deaf. If schools are the great equalizers, then homes are the harshest separators. In this article and its comment section, a quote stood out to me and ultimately summarizes this short writing — “It’s as though you had a front-row view on American inequality and the ways in which it was disguised and papered over.”
“The Plague” aged so well that it fits into the current pandemic like a set of tailored gloves. As readers and people who experience the weight of living, it is true that grief, suffering, and dying are the only things that remain constant. Anything else, including wealth, is temporary.
2. Denial
Every day, my Vietnamese parents try to contact me, asking me about how I am doing, what’s my temperature’s like, has the death toll raised or not, and on and on. Like clockwork, I would always try to deflect — answer a couple questions, and steer the conversation over. Vietnam is doing great: the bans are lifted, people are going outside to resume their work and their economy, students are dreading summer schools. I would lie there and listen to my mom reads hopeful news, as my dad chimes in from the background about how the PPE is in surplus and all the crazy methods his hospital employed to make sure no one gets sick, and everyone gets treated.
For the longest time, I’ve learned how to dissociate myself from situations that made me feel uncomfortable or unengaged. There, I let my mind wander to the task list perching on my table, as I map the working sequence out in the most efficient way. But strangely enough, the only thing on my mind then was — “How on earth did they do this? The country that I am currently living in is on the verge of falling apart.”
For the very first time, I felt numbingly powerless.
I remember when I left Vietnam to pursue Design in the United States, I was bought into the promises of “advanced civilization.” The glitz and glam of being an abroad student were laced into my long hours of SAT/ACT training; they manifested themselves in the form of my successful tutors (who, for some reasons, chose to go back to Vietnam regardless of their undergraduate/graduate training). In Merton’s Anomie, there was a section that I really enjoyed reading. Success, in Merton’s words, is defined “in terms of the product and in terms of the process, in terms of the outcome and in terms of activities.” My idea of success was simple –score the highest standardized points, go to the most prestigious school, and profit later on in life. My vision was tunneled — all I see was myself and the selfishness of Westernized individualism. Three years have passed since the election that brought about a dysfunctional White House; Three years have passed since I set foot on stolen land. Now, still reeling from the possibility of being deported back into my country after graduation, I saw things clearer.
“Bữa giờ con không làm gì cả. Chỉ ở nhà không. Con nhớ ba mẹ với em quá, không biết khi nào được về.” (These days, I don’t do much. All I do is stay at home. I miss you, dad, and sister so much. I don’t know when I can come back.)
Going to America in pursuit of a better education has been a dream of mine (and many people like me) for almost their entire lives. With the advent of the “global citizen” idea, we were given the chances to dream, to work hard for our dream, and to finally be there. But was the Western dream a lie? I have no heart to tell my parents that if it wasn’t for their hard work in the country I left behind, I would never stand a chance against people who were born and raised into art and design. If I had done so, it would be my admission of my own defeat. The future that I was promised has now taken a sharp detour; it looms over my shoulders while carrying the baggage of the Western civilization promise.
3. Bargaining
One of the corniest questions to ask during an icebreaker is: “What kind of superpower would you like to have?”
Being the normal, sane person that I have, I would have wished for infinite wealth. Having grown up in a family which started from barely having enough to having more than enough, a dream of mine was to see my parents and sister taken care of; I wished that they never had to work a day in their lives. I wished that I was posing in front of the Eiffel Tower or dining in a 3 Michelin-starred restaurant right now, instead of having to write a bickering piece of creative writing. At least I’m listening to Stromae’s critique of the class division and the grinding machine of capitalism.
Being the more sensible version of myself, I wish that I had the power to change the past. Up until this point, my encounter with the pandemic was a narrow miss — I traveled to China right before they announced their first case; I transited through Japan right before the death toll in China skyrocketed. In retrospect, I felt that luck has a strange way of making itself known. Still, I wish that people did not lose their lives because their government acted erratically. I wish that people were raised with more common sense and more than an ounce of collectivism in their minds. I wish I was in the position of power to make people’s lives better.
However, reality is often disappointing.
4. Depression
While I wished that this collection of response was more diverse in topics and that the only thing I can talk about is not the pandemic that is tearing our lives apart, it really can’t be helped.
The first couple weeks into self-quarantine, I felt free. There were no more long commutes on congested streets, no more waking up at 7:30 to get ready for school/ for work. The sense of freedom was overwhelming — whatever I was experiencing was the manifestation of a southern, gun-toting conservative man’s dream.
However, I realized that was only imagination. Michel de Montaigne’s “On Solitude” draws out a beautiful scenery — in there, I was completely safe in the embrace of solitude. “Virtue is satisfied with herself, without discipline, without words, without effects.” Before the world was shut away from my door, I find myself exiting functions that I deem “too mentally demanding/exhausting” and would curl up into a ball under the weight of my favorite blanket at home. Socializing gives me pangs of anxiety here and there, as the thoughts of exposing my personality to people will cast me right into their scrutinizing gaze. When the state order came into effect, I felt at ease. I took a specific quote from “On Solitude” to heart — “We have lived enough for others; let us at least live out the small remnant of life for ourselves; let us now call in our thoughts and intentions to ourselves, and to our own ease and repose.” Never before was there an option for me to truly sit with myself and reflect on things I’ve done, things that will be done, and things that I could have done differently. It was true — I was spending all my life, trying to please other people or living up to their expectations. I was doing so much of that that I never truly realized how detrimental it could be to my personality. Coming into quarantine, I had hoped that I could use this unprecedented opportunity to fix myself up, to do all the things that I was never able to do when I was still grinding projects in school. What I could not have foreseen is the loss of structure. I never realized how much I relied on the rigid structure of class schedule to get me through the day. That little sense of achievement that I get when I cross something off my working list was driving my productivity. I thrived on having people around. That was, in all honesty, individualism masked in collectivism.
I miss being able to go to grocery stores where I can spend hours and hours debating with my boyfriend on whether we should get the original Tostitos or the store-brand Tostitos. The bits and pieces of knowledge from passing strangers graced my debit card when I had a problem deciding on the freshness of the pork shoulder. The glistening McDonald’s order screen lit up my face after a long day in a light-blocked, open-plan office. And soon enough, I realized that everything that I took for granted were then precious. Michel de Montaigne’s writing is immaculate but it can be outdated when pitting against the human condition of today. The world as I know it, is only a 5 by 3 screen away from me. Yet, I crave talking to people. No amount of news or ads that say “Thank you to our heroes” will ever be enough — all of them are just for show. In my heart, I want to know that first responders are fine. I want them to be able to take a stroll in Central Park, breathing in the fresh spring air and going home to their families with joy. Most of all, I want them to be safe.
A question I keep asking myself is “have you regarded the pain of others today?” And frankly, I don’t respond to that question enough. While other people’s suffering will outweigh yours in some ways, there is always merit in being a compassionate and empathetic individual, whose intentions for the world is nothing less than good. Knowing that would help me sleep better at night, and not haunted by the weight of my own shortcomings.
5. Acceptance
I am indebted to these writings:
- On Solitude — by Michel de Montaigne
- Anomie — by Robert K.Merton
- The Plague — by Albert Camus
- Civilization & Its Discontent — by Sigmund Freud
- Modern Civilization and the Evolution of Personality: We Have Collapsed Infancy into Senility — by Arden R. King
- College Made Them Feel Equal. The Virus Exposed How Unequal Their Lives Are. — by Nicholas Casey
- Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting — by Julio Vincent Gambuto
