The phone rang at 2 a.m. My first thought was, “Who’s calling me at this hour?” I rolled over
and looked at my phone. I didn’t recognize the number right away. When I picked up the phone I recognized the voice immediately. He didn’t even say hello, just: “Listen up…”
It was a college friend from Harvard who is now a very accomplished doctor. “Listen to me,” he said, “Starting in like 48 hours there’s going to be a lockdown across the country, military style. This is going to be a bad, brother. People are gonna die.”
I was wide awake now. “First thing tomorrow,” he continued, “Go get as much Tylenol as you can and stock up on food. Gotta run”. And just like that he hung up the phone leaving me in the dark, literally, to try and grasp what I had just heard.
The next morning I got up and went to a local CVS. As I walked in and looked around everything appeared normal. I navigated down a couple of aisles full of stocked shelves. I took a left and then a quick right. When I looked up what I saw caught me off guard. There in the middle of the aisle between packed shelves was a huge gap, three levels high, of completely empty shelving space where, I was later told, sat countless packages of Tylenol two hours earlier.
As a filmmaker, I tend to see everything from a cinematic point of view. This would be the scene in the horror movie where you see the first evidence of the monster before you actually see the monster and begin to imagine the destruction yet to come. It was like seeing Godzilla’s footprint in the mud. This was the first moment I thought…“this is not going to be good.”
Since that day much of what my friend has predicted has come to pass. And things continue to get
worse. Every day we hear story after story of rising infection rates, people dying because of a lack of ventilators, hospitals bursting at the seams. After a while it becomes difficult to hear and you become numb. Especially when you are trapped in the house with nowhere to go. And sometimes it seems there is no end in sight. But there is an end in sight. Someday soon this will all pass. And
when it does we’re going to be faced with a new world.
One of the great gifts of this virus, if there is one, is that we have been given the rare opportunity
to take a step back and reflect on our place in the world and re-evaluate our priorities. The world has stopped and so have we. Not by choice, but by necessity. We have time to think. About what’s important, about what’s not. The merry go round of life will surely start up again, but for the time being we are in suspended animation. Use this time to prepare for whatever is next because before you know it, it will be here.
I think in the wake of this tragedy what will remain are the lessons we have learned. I believe the most valuable lesson, above all else, will be that we are inextricably bound together despite our differences. It is an undeniable fact of being human and it is the lesson that will make us a better country and a better people.
Ironically, although this interconnectivity is the reason this virus has been able to spread so aggressively, it is also the reason we will defeat it. Because we recognize now more than ever that we really are all in this together. That our true strength is our common humanity. Rarely in my life has this been more evident.
Everywhere people are making sacrifices. Every day you hear another story of a heroic doctor or nurse. Or another story of someone going the extra mile to help someone who’s having a hard time, often someone they hardly know. This virus, in its insidious ability to jump from one person to another, has literally fused us together. It has forced us to realize that the only way we can beat this as a country, or beat any challenge as a country, is by coming together and recognizing that we are unstoppable when we do.
I understand that in light of the devastation all around us, some may consider this outlook overly optimistic at best, or delusional at worst, but isn’t that part of what it means to be an American. To face impossible odds and not blink.
After all we are a country founded by a group of people who got on a boat and dared to make their own country. That doesn’t happen every day. And more to the point, we are a country built by
immigrants who faced incredible risks to venture to our shores from every corner of the world in search of the American Dream. It’s in our blood and integral to our national character to do the impossible.
That’s the spirit that has sustained us through every tragedy imaginable. And it’s the same spirit that will lead us through this. Without question, when this storm passes the world will be changed. And so will we. We will emerge from this stronger than ever. More united than ever. Better than ever. Looking back I believe people will say, in the immortal words of Winston Churchill, “this was their finest hour.”
Because if there is one thing I know as a filmmaker, especially an American filmmaker, it’s this …the monster never wins. Ever.
Frank Ciota grew up in Lynn, graduated from Harvard and has directed award-winning films in both the United States and Italy