Adaptation

    These days the mornings are dark when I walk my dog, my reflective vest and a blinking light on my dog's leash catching the occasional car headlight.  But the cool air and the early pre-dawn darkness provides a rare chance for me to look up and see a glimpse of the moon and planets (the city lights, even at that early hour, still casts too much light to darken the sky enough to make the majority of stars visible).  Cars are few at that hour and it is a time for me to watch my dog revel in his own "visible" world, that of smell (my dog has pannus, an auto-immune disease common to some breeds and an affliction which causes reduced and eventually complete loss of vision).   It constantly reminds me that there are many ways to view the world around us.  And let's face it, we're living in a new world, a world facing ever more extinctions and viruses and wildfires and changing climates.  We seem to have crowded ourselves into smaller and smaller places (for the most part) as resources both accumulate (plastics) and decline (clean water, for one).  Drones and robots give us a preview not so much of what this new world may look like but rather what we created in our old and current world.  Tall and empty office buildings, relatively deserted streets, amusement parks and restaurants with room to move,  home work spaces, a virus that has hit our White House dozens of times.* 

    Rachel Hollis put it a bit more bluntly in her book, Didn't See That Coming: I assume you're here because some part of your world (or maybe the whole of it) got turned inside out and you're trying to find your way back...It seems everyone would prefer that when we're hurt or scared or uncertain that we don't bother anyone else with it...So, let's acknowledge that this sucks.  Then, let's go one better.  Let's acknowledge how frightening this is and how hard it is and how much we wish it weren't happening -- and let's allow ourselves to be deeply disappointed by the unfairness of it all...If you want to move forward, be honest about what's going on even if it's only to yourself.  When the world basically shut down in the spring of 2020 due to the pandemic there was so much disappointment and grief but there was also a weird comparison of misfortune going on that made nearly everyone I know feel like their disappointment was petty and small.  It wasn't small and it wasn't petty.  It matters you're disappointed because you matter.

    Encouraging words, but difficult to process when you're days away from missing another payment or facing just scraps in your food cupboard.  As highlighted in the NY Review of Books, the Paris-born poet, Karthika Nair wrote: We're all dying, less or more broken.  The sages say this is what it means to be human.  To be human, like runes on parchment: to fade, to tear, to melt -- and sometimes, to be unmeant.  So we struggle to adapt, the emphasis able to easily fall on either word...we struggle, we adapt.  The choice or problem is ours; after all, we're the adults here.  Or are we?  An article in The Atlantic had this to say: Imagine for a moment that the future is going to be even more stressful than the present.  Maybe we don’t need to imagine this.  You probably believe it.  According to a survey from the Pew Research Center last year, 60 percent of American adults think that three decades from now, the U.S. will be less powerful than it is today.  Almost two-thirds say it will be even more divided politically.  Fifty-nine percent think the environment will be degraded.  Nearly three-quarters say that the gap between the haves and have-nots will be wider.  A plurality expect the average family’s standard of living to have declined.  Most of us, presumably, have recently become acutely aware of the danger of global plagues.  The article then added: Suppose, too, that you are brave or crazy enough to have brought a child into this world, or rather this mess.  If ever there were a moment for fortifying the psyche and girding the soul, surely this is it.  But how do you prepare a child for life in an uncertain time—one far more psychologically taxing than the late-20th-century world into which you were born?  To protect children from physical harm, we buy car seats, we childproof, we teach them to swim, we hover.  How, though, do you inoculate a child against future anguish?  For that matter, what do you do if your child seems overwhelmed by life in the here and now?

     Naturally we (the adults) want the best for our children, so it bothers us to read that suicides by children aged 5 to 11 have nearly doubled in recent years.  Wait, 5 to 11 years old?  Emergency room visits for suicide attempts or suicidal thoughts passed the one million mark in 2015.  Added the article: 43 percent of those visits were by children younger than 11...This is the essence of our moment.  The problem with kids today is also a crisis of parenting today, which is itself growing worse as parental stress rises, for a variety of reasons.  And so we have a vicious cycle in which adult stress leads to child stress, which leads to more adult stress, which leads to an epidemic of anxiety at all ages.  Perhaps it is our (the adults) fault.  Said Discover: The average child younger than 2 spends around 40 minutes a day looking at screens (as in computer or tablet screens)...The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that kids under 18 months avoid screens altogether, apart from the occasional video chat.  In case you happened to glance over that last part, the article was talking about little ones 18-24 months old.  New MRI research is showing that for young brains under the age of 3, there is a lowered ability to process screen learning vs. that of being taught by a face-to-face person; add to this that recent MRI studies are showing the possibility of neurological damage in such youngsters: Higher screen time use was linked to lower amounts of white matter, the fibrous tissue that connects different parts of the brain.  These connections support the development of emerging abilities like literacy and language skills.  So we (the adults) have to doubly deal with this new world, a world changing for us and also one changing for our children.  As the saying goes, in order to survive we must learn to adapt.

Photo of malarial parasite: Albert Bonniers Forlag for National Geographic

     But we appear to be slow learners.  Through- out history, we humans seem to have wanted more, to visit and perhaps conquer vast stretches of land or peoples, or to take over the role of top predator on both land and sea.** After all, felt such world "leaders," what could stop us?  Indeed, what could stop such forces as the ancient Egyptians or the Spartans, or Alexander the Great or Hannibal, or even the Roman Empire?  Yet there was something, a something so small that it was ignored or not understood and yet was able to wipe out or limit the advance of all of those empires...the malaria parasite.  Of the 450 types of malaria that scientists have so far discovered, just 5 varieties infect humans.  Wrote author Timothy Winegard in his book, The Mosquito:*** ...this miscreant will mutate and reproduce inside your liver for one to two weeks, during which time you will show no symptoms.  A toxic army of this new form of the parasite will then explode out of your liver and invade your bloodstream.  The parasites attach to your red blood cells, quickly penetrate the outer defenses, and feast on the inner hemoglobin.  Inside the blood cell, they undergo another metamorphosis and reproductive cycle.  Engorged blood cells eventually burst, spewing both a duplicate form, which marches forward to attack fresh red blood cells, and also a new "asexual" form that calmly floats in your bloodstream, waiting for mosquito transportation.  The parasite is a shape-shifter, and it is precisely this genetic flexibility that makes it so difficult to eradicate or suppress with drugs or vaccines.  When it comes to adapting to survive, there is likely no better example than the malarial parasite (it even mutates and adapts inside the mosquito's body).  And the parasite is patient...3 of the 5 types can continue to cause a relapse of symptoms in their victims for up to 20 years.  The malaria parasite...began its life as a form of aquatic algae 600 to 800 million years ago, and still contains vestiges of photosynthesis machinery.  As we evolved, these viruses and parasites, eager for new outlets, met our challenge and adapted to ensure their survival.  And now comes another something small...the coronavirus.

    This is not to say that we should give up.  To read about our resilience (indeed, the shape of the sickle cell was a human adaptation to outwit malaria, which worked perfectly against the parasite but came with other costs; those affected with sickle cell disease often live only until their mid-30s).  One almost has to decide what to read and what viewpoint to take.  Jena Nardella was only 19 when she wanted to raise enough money to bring two villages in Africa fresh water.  As she wrote in her book One Thousand Wells "we were too Christian for corporations, and too corporate for Christian organizations."  But she persisted, following a Grammy-winning Christian band around and soon creating a nonprofit: Over the years, that one dollar became twenty dollars and one hundred dollars, and today, more than 25 million dollars. Those dollars were invested into twenty organizations across Africa to drill 207 new wells, repair 449 broken wells, construct 181 rain-catchment tanks, protect 114 springs, and serve 87 communities with biosand filters.  As she added on her website,  "The thing about lost causes is that they’re only lost if you leave them behind."  A similar story emerged from Dr. Sanjeev Arora who: ...was frustrated that he could serve only a fraction of the hepatitis C patients in the state.  He wanted to serve as many patients with hepatitis C as possible, so he created a free, educational model and mentored community providers across New Mexico in how to treat the condition.  His efforts led to Project Echo which is now worldwide and is used as a model for showing how effective telemedicine can be for so many other conditions in rural areas of the world.

    Another book I found interesting was by literature professor Pierre Bayard who divided his book into chapters titled (among others), Books You Didn't Know; Books You Have Skimmed; Books You Have Heard Of; Books You Have Forgotten.  It made me think that one could come close to summing up life in such chapters: travels and relationships, encounters and experiences, things we had heard about or barely noticed or perhaps had even completely forgotten (such as when a good friend or sibling recalls doing something with you, something of which you have absolutely no recollection).  What part of life was there that we "didn't know" or that we had "skimmed" or "forgotten?"  The Next Course by Melanie Dunea asked famous chefs what they would choose for their "last" meal, what they would drink, who they would invite, that sort of thing.  The majority of answers were meals that they themselves would prepare, meals to enjoy with family and friends, accompanied with wines well beyond the means of most of us.  But then came Australian chef Shannon Bennett who talked of a customer whose young daughter had died of a neurological disease, something which caused him to sell his business and immerse himself in charity work.  Shannon wrote: I always drew inspiration from him.  When I got frustrated or he'd see me ready to explode in the kitchen, he'd say, "Hey Shannon, remember rule number six."  And rule number six is: Never take yourself seriously.  And now you're asking, well, what's rule number seven?  And there isn't any other rule.  It's just number six, and you always remember it.  When asked who besides his wife and then 2-year old he would have join him for his meal, he added: ... I would love to invite some guy, a complete stranger, from off the street.  We have this perception of everyone we walk past on the street, whether it's because we're defensive or we always think the negative before the positive.  Do you ever walk past someone in the street and actually say, "I bet you he's a nice guy?"  You never do.  Hey, that's life; let's turn it around.

    Walking my dog not only in the morning but also in the early evening, I am treated to sights I have probably missed for most of my life, sunsets that look "like lava in the sky," as my brother in Hawaii described them, and morning clouds that seem to change color every few minutes as the earth quietly rotated ever closer to its tilt toward the light of the sun.  Rolling Stone talked of Brian Wilson's comparing his creation of God Only Knows as "being blind, but in being blind, you can see more.  You close your eyes; you're able to see a place or something that's happening."  I'm not sure what world my dog "sees" as he smells and maneuvers his way through the morning darkness.  I can only look down and think that when I say "you matter," he likely thinks only of Rule #6...perhaps that and the tee shirt slogan that reads: You Matter.  At the Speed of Light Squared, You Energy.  

*This is the number of people who have tested positive in that inner circle as reported by the White House as Trump announced his own symptoms.  His immediate treatment of immune-suppressants, generally only given in the later and more advanced stages of the virus, has outside medical personnel questioning just how long he may have actually started having indications of the disease, and if so, how many others he may have possibly given it to.  NPR reported that since March 2020, the Administration had reported 121 positive cases...

**Sadly, one drawback of the search for a coronavirus vaccine will be the likely killing of nearly half a million sharks which are often considered the top predator in the ocean.  Their fatty livers contain a chemical called squalene, reports Smithsonian, an "adjunct" that helps the immune system response (remember the shark "cartilage" craze a decade ago which resulted in the death of millions of sharks, all in the mistaken belief that it helped prevent cancer?)...sharks have a very slow reproductive timeline and are already being slaughtered at the rate of 3 million per year, primarily due to demand from both the cosmetics industry as well as the ancient Chinese belief in the medicinal qualities of shark fins.

***Note that the mosquito is only the carrier (and that only the female bites); what's equally fascinating is that while our eyes can only pick up a single "needle" penetrating our skin, there are actually six.  Author Winegard described it this way: She inserts two serrated mandible cutting blades (much like an electric carving knife with two blades shifting back and forth), and saws into your skin, while two other retractors open a passage for the proboscis, a hypodermic syringe that emerges from its protective sheath.  With this straw she starts to suck 3-5 milligrams of your blood, immediately excreting its water, while condensing its 20% protein content.  All the while, a sixth needle is pumping in saliva that contains an anticoagulant preventing your blood from clotting at the puncture site.