Covid-19 in Short Stories

Short Stories During This Time

Service, gratitude, but only when it affects us March 16, 2020 is a date that will always be engraved into my mind. As I sat in my room, getting 50 notifications for CNN, swiping through stories of Covid-19 news, and scrolling through tweets on countries' death rates, I sat back in my chair and came to the realization that this is affecting every single human on planet Earth. It was the day that I had realized what was occuring in our world, and what the nature of the human condition was. As people, we love to think we are helpful and caring for others, but the current events have solidified that to be true. The nature of humans is to simply help, yet we are somehow so helpless. As human beings, we feel this need to be sympathetic towards the young, the eldarly, the disabled, the sick and the lost. This need to help those who are more helpless than us is a quality that many of us may have identified with, but never realized it till now. Internally, we want to leave our homes and do everything possible to help those in need, yet we are struggling because the most we can do is stay in our homes, with our heating and cooling, comfortable beds, a roof over our head, and food on the table… How can’t we feel guilty when we look at our surroundings? Although the current nature of the human condition is to help, it's also become gratitude.

Photograph by: Ajla Ahmetovic

Gratitude is an internal feeling of being thankful for the many things around you regardless of what's occurring in the world. During Covid, I have come to the realization that as humans, when something isn't directly affecting us and our lives we have a quick minute of gratitude and then we carry on about our day. For example, my parents survived a genocide in Bosnia and Hercegovina. Three straight years of mass murders, rapes, bombs, hunger, and loss was experienced from 1992-1995. The thing is, the Bosnian war wasn't affecting people in Australia, or Brazil, or the Carribean Islands. People around the world who woke up happy, safe, and healthy, may have been thankful for a split second during 1992 to 1995 but like I said they went back to living their lives, occasionally reminded every few months that there's a mass genocideoccuring in Europe.

The reason for the story above was to make you understand that the nature of humans is to help, have sympathy for others, and have gratitude in tough times, but also a part of it is self centered. We only seem to go into this instinct of caring for the whole world once it is also affecting us as well, and waking up each morning thankful for our health when a deadly virus is right outside our doors.

My call to lead As I give a presentation on leadership qualities, one of them is humane orientation. Humane orientation is the ability to be a leader that makes sure humanity is safe and well. I sit bad in my office chair and wonder, “What in the world am I doing as a leader right now?” “I should be more like father Boyle.” “I’m stuck inside and the world is struggling, what can I even do?” I pull out a sheet pad and I start writing.

1. Go through clothes to donate to the needy

2. Donate to organizations looking for a vaccine

3. Donate to organizations helping the sick and the needy

4. Educate yourself so you can educate others

5. Help teachers out by creating lessons or videos for kids

6. Go outside and clean up the lawn for the elderly neighbors

7. Write letters to family and friends

8. Write letters to anyone

9. Spread positivity

10. Sit back, thank God for your health, and pray for others.

Number ten, the one that made me realize there is one thing that connects everyone, regardless of where you are, religion, values, or beliefs: We are all being thankful, and hoping for the world to recover. I realized, “That's how I can lead!” I can use my drive in hopes that people recover in order to lead by doing small actions. If we all make a list of small things we can do from the comfort of our own home, we can lead together as Father Boyle does with his compassion for the community. In Tattoos on the Heart, Boyle truly puts himself to the side and others forward. As a human oriented leader, he shows that the people in his community are put before his own self, and in the end putting others before you actually makes you feel better. If we could all take something from Boyles way of life, it would be exactly that. We need to humble ourselves, bring ourselves back down to gratitude, and help out others in any way possible.

Classroom Aid in Leading and Serving It's the end of January/ early February, I am walking to class covered in layed because it's nearly 10 degrees outside. I’m stepping foot on a private university, ranked in the top 100 universities in the nation, paying 64k tuition, planning to get my bachelors: it's just another day at school for me. I walk into my classroom on the second floor of the education building and sit at the end of a long table in a classroom with 15 other students. Our professors start to talk about what this class is and the service hours they expect from us. “Immersive yourself in something, learn something, give your time to a place or organization and simply volunteer.” I wondered, “what can I do?” A soup kitchen, a homeless shelter, a hospital volunteer, an aid… Ah ha, an aid! I get to help in a school setting where I would be of good use and also be able to get more hours inside of a school. And so I did.

Photograph by: Ajla Ahmetovic (Al Salam Day School)

I decided to go into my own community for once, believe it or not… I have always been in public school, specifically the Mehlville School District so I was very familiar with what public school was, but what about an Islamically based Private School? I thought no thats too easy, I am a Muslim girl who wears hijab, thats nowhere our of my comfort zone… right? Wrong. It was as if you had placed a needle in a haystack, that's what I looked like at Al-Salam Day School. You may be wondering, “how in the world could you possibly feel out of place in a place where the teachers are wearing Hijab and the students are saying “Salam” as they walk past you?” Well, I felt just as Father Boyle had felt, at first not such about how to help, but then used his beliefs to guide him in simply helping others around him. I picked up my bag and headed to a second grade classroom. I say “Salam” (peace be upon you) to the teacher and introduce myself, “I am here to be a student aid, so whatever you need from me you let me know, I want to help you out as much as possible!” She looked at me and gave me a hug, “You have truly been sent from God to help me out, for He knows how much I am struggling.”

I was blessed enough to complete 20 hours as a classroom aid before everything happened in our world, with nearly 13 hours being spent with that specific second grade teacher. I was called to be there, I showed up and someone saw me as the greatest blessing: God sent, literally.

I had hoped I could do something similar to the stories on Tattoos on the Heart. I wanted to go into an area or situation where I wasn't familiar with any of the people, yet still create bonds with them. Father Boyle had changed the lives of people, from the outside we wouldn't compare a Priest and a Criminal, but he changed my mind as I read. Through his stories, he showed me that the only thing that separates us as people is a title. We all have the same drives, the same ideas, the push to change, to help others, to create laughter, and to love.

One of my biggest wishes is that once this is all said and done, I can do what Father Boyle did. I can go to a place where there aren't people like me and build the strongest connections with them. It's a human instinct to feel the need to belong here, and if I can have one conversation with a stranger and satisfy that need for belonging, then I have done what Father Boyle spent all those years doing.

Who am I? There are lots of things that I have learned about myself these past few months: giving my time, being intentional, and true gratitude. Giving my time is the first thing that I learned in 2020. I took six to seven hours a week, went into a school, worked with students, helped teachers, and created a place for myself. All I did was give them my time and expect nothing in return. I didn’t get paid, I didn’t get a letter or an award… I gave my time and helped someone in need, someone who was begging for me to be there. This is probably one of the greatest things that I have learned this year. Back then, when I gave my time I would expect something in return: a paycheck, a thank you, or some kind of recognition. Boyle never expected his name to be written in lights for the things that he did, even though I believe they should be. He did beautiful and wonderful things for his community, things that the majority of people wouldn’t give time to do. But, he didn’t expect anything out of it. He gave his time, and in turn he created relationships, he built bonds, and he filled that need in his heart, the need to give back. Not expecting anything in return is truly beautiful in and of itself. Giving everything you have just to satisfy that need of helping others, is more than enough.

Being intentional is something that we as humans always try to do. It usually ends up being something we try practicing every few months and then we fall off the train and find something else to keep occupied. I've learned that intentionality is something that requires true practice. When you do something, do it with an intention. I found this to be difficult when I would pick up a bag of donuts and think, “hmm… what is my intention for eating this?” In all seriousness though, find intention in your life. Why am I filming this lesson for fifth graders on zoom? Is it for a grade? Is it to pass a class? Or is the intention stronger? Is it because my heart aches for those students who can't learn? Is it because during that 45 minute lesson, is the only time the student has social interactions? I have learned to ask myself these questions because I was going through life simply doing things because they needed to be done. Boyle had the true and pure intention of helping these people come from ex-gang life in order to put them back on their feet so that they may work any better. That's pure intention, he didn’t do it just because it was a part of his Jesuit journey.

Lastly, I have learned a lot on the topic of gratitude. As I mentioned in the beginning, we as humans tend to only have gratitude when something goes wrong in our lives, and have strong gratitude if something was actually affecting us. I thought about the #prayforparis hashtag that went around a little while ago. When something happened in Paris, we took 5 minutes of our day to send them prayers, post a photo and talk about it with our friends. Five weeks later it was wiped from our mind. Do you see what I mean when I say we are self centered? We tend to be more thankful for everything during these times, simply because corona is on the streets and in our homes this time, not in someone else’s. I think this was needed for all of humanity. May we now always wake up thankful that we have lived another day, in our warm beds, headed to the kitchen to eat a nice home cooked breakfast.