Within this past year of aging as gracefully as I know how, I found out that I had a medical condition unknown to me altogether because it was asymptomatic. I happened to be at a walk-in clinic to check out my ear when they discovered that my heart was broken. I felt as cool as a center seed in a cucumber while my heart was going ninety to nothing. I had no other indicators of my cautious cardiac condition, which was later called atrial fibrillation, or “a-fib” for short. Through the miracle of medication and a procedure called cardio-version, my heart is back to average, or even slightly better than average on good days.
The term “asymptomatic” has crept into our day-to-day jargon as we discuss all the nuances and ramifications of the Covid 19. The term itself can be a condition or a person producing or showing no symptoms of this virus, and the danger in this current situation is that of not knowing exactly who may be an innocent transmitter of this debilitating pandemic. Thus the necessity of social distancing and face masks and hand washing. Carriers of this contagion are unaware of their own condition.
Running side by side with the pandemic is another human condition that’s had latent symptoms for years and years. I grew up a down-home racist and failed to recognize the symptoms of prejudice until halfway through my life. A lot of it was inherited with mother’s milk and the southern air that I breathed. Early on, I was indelibly taught by word of mouth and innuendo that all Americans were not created equal and their inalienable rights were not necessarily so. That’s why we had signs like “Blacks Only” and voter registration laws. Thanks to some guy by the name of James Crow, this was “our way of life”. All of this was so ingrained in us that I never felt a symptom of the sick attitude that demeans and diminishes other human beings. While taking in all this with my ears and eyes, I never realized that I had a broken heart and closed mind.
Then, one day, I woke up and realized that my lily white heart was not in the right place. I was sick without ever realizing it because of the asymptomatic nature of this prejudicial plague. There’s no vaccine for this, but the cure comes with our doing the hard work of reconciliation. In the dog days of this Covid-19 virus, the racial issue has raised its tired hand once again for resolution and justice. We might have fooled ourselves into believing that sort of stuff has gone with the wind. But it hasn’t. And it won’t until we acknowledge that we have this contagious infirmity even while seemingly asymptomatic and passing this weakness of the heart to another generation.
As Benjamin Franklin foretold us: “Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.” It’s a good time to whip this ancient dragon by listening to these words by the late Thurgood Marshall: “We must dissent from indifference. We must dissent from apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust… We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.”
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This, especially the first part, is a good reminder that many of our close friends have “conditions” of which we are unaware.
Hi Dudley. I like this it contains seeds of hope. In 1975 atrial fibrillation caused a condition that led to my father’s death when he was 64. My brother Sandy has the same problem as you but now we know better than we did in 1975 and you are amazingly healthy! Hopefully we are learning, even if slowly, the things to make our communities much more healthy!
Keep well.
John
I like your quotes from Benjamin Franklin and Thurgood Marshall and hope we are seeing some of those changes in our lives and communities.
Black Lives Matter. Every minute of every hour of every day of our lives. Except for the Native Americans, we are all immigrants in the USA. No matter if we come from Africa, Norway or Mexico, we are all EQUAL in the United States of America.