By no means am I wealthy, but I am completely aware of how privileged I am and try my best to adhere to the adage of “to whom much is given, much is expected.” For now, I am only lucky to still have a job and a good paycheck.
We are in a horrifically sad time, and it is only going to get much worse. If law school prepared me for anything, it is how to deal with uncertainty. In normal times, everything is debatable and at the end of the day, sound logic usually prevails. Now grocery store workers, first responders, medical professionals, biologists, to name a few, are constantly and directly faced with threats to their physical and mental health. As a lawyer, even in these times, nothing I do puts my life in direct jeopardy.
While I am fortunate to be a labor lawyer and to work for one of the best unions in the world, this period is not without stress. It is not stressful in the conventional sense: deadlines, shifting legal interpretations, smarmy opposing counsels, etc. The issues now are more pressing, immediate and impactful – mass layoffs, closed operations, concerns for workers’ personal health and safety, unemployment compensation needs, not to mention caring for children or sick family members. The division between my work life and personal life is blurred, and the constancy of being at home means that I am never off the clock. There is no such thing as a true break. The persistent problems are never out of my mind. It is mentally draining. Every day is the same. The legal advice I now give is usually prefaced with “I’m not completely sure.”
Still most of my sorrow comes from the absolute horror and anxiety that too many citizens are facing or soon will be facing. There is no way to sugar coat the extent of this dread. My hope is that each of us has developed workable coping methods. When I think of unforeseeable chaos of an unimaginable degree, I think of an ill-nourished and ill-clothed slave crossing the North Atlantic and seeing snow for the first time, perhaps on the deck of a ship. What went through that person’s mind? What was that person’s idea of certainty? How much strength did it take to cope for that person based on that person’s new reality?
Or for a more contemporaneous analogy I reflect on the struggles of a family on the streets without shelter, a job, medicine, food, money, or the slightest degree of optimism.
I am not sure why I write these words. It is not to offer hope. I am fairly confident that things will be okay for me and my wife Tracie. The lasting question is whether things can ever be good for you and me, when it is so bad for so many others? At the end of the day, we all do need to look out for those we know and for those we don’t yet know.
Matt Harris
Alexandria