June 1, 2021

The End of Something

A fascinating aspect of the Great Influenza of 1918 is its relative absence in literature. The "Spanish Flu" makes cameo appearances in One of Ours, a Willa Cather novel, and in Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel, but by comparison to the way the Vietnam War, for instance, preoccupied fiction writers, the Great Influenza, even in its vast devastation and especially in its virulence in otherwise healthy young adults, did not capture writers. Perhaps it was its proximity to World War I, or perhaps it was because it was one of those horrors that yields little beyond sadness upon examination and is best let go.

As you reflect on the past 15 months this summer, I encourage you to entertain this possibility, that surely you will collect some silver lining material, but much of what you endured personally and professionally through the pandemic might be best forgotten, if possible, or relegated to the faceless suburbs of your consciousness where things go not to disappear but to wear very shallow cognitive grooves. Better and healthier to rest and then to face forward to a fall where you will lead a school community that is once again in charge of making its own meaning.