Cohort VIII Fellow Marisa Hayase of The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation shares her thoughts from a recent curriculum session on Diagnosing Situations.
Contributed by Marisa Hayase, Cohort VIII
Early in the pandemic, my mother-in-law was one of a handful of people in her care home to contract COVID-19. She was sent to Queen’s hospital, and we were relieved when she reached the threshold of 10 days without symptoms. But the day before she was scheduled to leave the hospital, she passed away.
They attributed her death to underlying conditions. This is a time when everyone is touched by loss. I am freshly tuned in to the desire for reassurance and remedy. Between the effects of COVID-19, the increasingly violent politics consuming this country, and new layers of tragedy from a long history of racial inequality and brutality, every one of us is impacted by the question of how we move forward from here.
Having the courage to “live the question” with people that differ from us is an investment in diagnosing and addressing the root causes of our challenges. Vaccines and impeachment trials won’t resolve our broken connections to each other and the natural systems that protect us. This is a time to find greater reassurance in the difficult questions than in easy answers. This is a time to take deep interest in the underlying conditions of each other’s lives.
Pacific Business News, The Garden Island