Is The World Ending Again? Meh, I Got This. No Biggie.

I’ve Seen the End of The World a Few Times and I’m Here to Talk About it.

Philip Maher

Are you tired of seeing a plethora of stories related to the toilet paper Apocalypse? I sure am. But here we are. This virus seemed to have popped up in our vocabulary just a few weeks ago, yet it is all that we can think about today.  

Those of us from the international aid universe have seen Armageddon and it’s not that bad. Of course, it’s horrible if you’ve lost a loved one. Your life is changed and for that I’m sorry. But, read on. 

Take solace that this is not the actual end of the world. Better days are ahead—just hang on. Yes, it’ll be a wild ride. But most of us will make it through.

Having worked around organizations like World Vision, The World Food Program and a variety of military folks in the midst of crises, I’ve seen the Apocalypse a few times over my 30-year career. I try to see it all in perspective.

The empty streets of Toronto, Vancouver or New York remind me of entering a number of almost empty cities during evacuations and lockdowns.

My first was a nearly vacant city in Angola during a war and the famine that followed. All that remained was a few hungry locals who were too poor to leave. A few years later I was driven through the radioactive city of Pripyat, near Chernobyl. A few years after that I arrived at the deserted capital of Kigali after the genocide. Void of humans, all these places seemed to feel like the end of the world.

My visit to an empty city in Angola

Unoccupied cities are nothing new to me, nor overall craziness from chaos and feeling vulnerable.  In East Timor during a civil conflict that destroyed that country we pitched tents in burned-out buildings and hoped we’d make it through the night. Somalia’s war, Sudan’s conflict, the tsunami, Bosnia and Syria—I’ve seen the end a dozen times.

I know some readers will argue, “Yes but these were different situations.” Yes, but they always are.  One thing I learned in this business is that disasters are never the same. Shift happens. Crises always come with some new twist. That’s why they are crises.

The most poignant words come from people who have escaped these horrors. A woman from Rwanda, after the genocide, said to me, “We thought it was the end of the world.” For some, it was. I asked a mother in Bosnia about mourning her son’s death. She said, “Philip, mourning is a luxury.”

I don’t mean to trivialize horror. But most of these scenarios are much more violent than anything we are seeing today, except perhaps in the toilet paper aisle.

I am taking this pandemic seriously. I’ve also seen the results of not obeying health officials with the spread of Ebola in West Africa.  So, I’m complying with all that health officials are asking of us. However, we’ve seen disasters before. For most people, crisis is just a word. For me, it’s been a regular occurrence over my career. But, we are not on a roller coaster going downhill, with our hair on fire with no track at the end.

The good news is that it seems likely that we will have a medical solution to this. No, it will not come fast enough. It never does. But anti-viral vaccines are already being tested. Furthermore, most cases are mild, we know how to detect it and we know how to kill it on surfaces.

C.S. Lewis asked, “How are we to live in the atomic age?” His answer, “Do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation.”

My final note: keep those toilet paper memes and jokes rolling in. They help to keep me afloat like an emotional life jacket. Wash your hands and stay home.

Stay healthy…. Philip.