"Have you been infected yet?"

Once again, the American author, Stoic philosopher, and bookstore owner Ryan Holiday wrote an excellent post today for his "Daily Stoic" blog, entitled appropriately enough, "Have You Been Infected Yet?"  It's not what you think - he wasn't asking if you've been infected with COVID-19 yet.  What he was doing, I think, was comparing the experiences of the ancient Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius during another pandemic called the Antonine Plague.  The Antonine Plague started around 165 CE and lasted for approximately 15 years.  This ancient pandemic was also caused by a virus, believed by most scholars to be either smallpox or measles, and it is believed to have killed anywhere between 1.5 million to 25 million people in the ancient world.  

Holiday suggests that Meditations, which was written by Marcus Aurelius, was a "pandemic book" since it was at least partially written during the Antonine Plague.  He writes, "Marcus Aurelius wrote that there are two types of pestilence in the midst of an epidemic, or indeed any crisis - there is the one that can destroy your life and there is the one that can destroy your character."

Holiday goes on, "Selfishness. Cruelty. Indifference to the fate of your fellow humans. Cowardice. Desperate panic buying. Paranoia. Crippling anxiety. These were things seen in Marcus’s time just as they were seen the last few years. Same goes for scapegoating, demagoguery, misinformation, and all the other things that crisis can bring out of leaders and populations alike. Perhaps you were infected like this. Or perhaps there was something more personal you caught during the pandemic–bad habits, a relapse, screwed up priorities, skewed values."

I have been fortunate during the COVID-19 pandemic, but others have not been as lucky as me.  As we nudge ever so closer to the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, let's all work together to put an end to the other one that seems to have occured with it.  These last three plus years have been incredibly stressful on everyone, but that doesn't give us the excuse to forget how to be kind and respectful.  As Fred Rogers said, "There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind.  The second way is to be kind.  The third way is to be kind."