Lean on Me — what to do when there is no cure?

3 min readMay 28, 2020

April 3, 2020

I love words. They help me understand things. They give me comfort. They give me hope.

On the morning after the 2016 election, I wrote about the words I used to console my crying son. I told him that hate is real, but so is love and compassion and that if we want to make our country better, we’re going to have to do it. And I told him that as long as there are people here who think this way then America can never be all bad.

Two years ago, I pepped myself up with the words of Congressman John Lewis, “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, month, or a year. It is the struggle of a lifetime.”

Over a year ago, it was words found on the wall at Auschwitz, “I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining. I believe in love, even though I don’t feel it. I believe in God, even when he is silent.” I wrote then, that the era of Trump was bringing clarity about who we really are — a necessary step for change. I felt hope that we would see the ignorance and the hate among us and by shining a light on it, we would more easily be able to root it out.

And now here we are. Facing a pandemic that currently has no cure. The only known way to combat it is to slow it down. Bring down the rates of new infection so that our medical community can treat those with severe symptoms and try to save as many as they can.

Slowing the disease down requires coordinated selflessness from us all. It requires the young and the healthy to stay home. Children to miss school. Parents to miss work. Weddings, graduations, funerals all cancelled. It also requires economic sacrifice as missed paychecks pile up for some. As empty restaurants and stores can’t keep their workers. And all this not to stop it, not to cure, just to slow down and buy us time to save more lives.

And whenever, however it ends, we will have to pull together to survive the aftermath — opportunity lost, jobs lost, lives lost.

I love words, but for today, I have no words. I see the rate of infection and the rate of deaths continue to climb exponentially. I see the jobless rate doing the same. One can’t help but imagine days or weeks from now as people run out of money and run out of food. It’s an open question whether that happens before or after we run out of hospital beds and ventilators.

I’m feeling fairly down today. I’m tired of my house already even though I know I’m lucky to be ensconced in such a nice place, to not have to worry about food or mortgage payments while this unfurls. But I’m tired nonetheless. I’m wracked with concern for my family, particularly the family elders. And I’m terrified of what will happen to my clients who are still in custody.

Since I have no words, perhaps it’s time to again borrow from others who are better with words than I.

I had planned to end with this:

Frodo: “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.”

Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

J.R.R. Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring

But with the passing of Bill Withers, perhaps for a time when our collective action is required for our survival, this is a better end.

Sometimes in our lives we all have pain

We all have sorrow

But if we are wise

We know that there’s always tomorrow

Lean on me, when you’re not strong

And I’ll be your friend

I’ll help you carry on

For it won’t be long

’Til I’m gonna need

Somebody to lean on

Please swallow your pride

If I have things you need to borrow

For no one can fill those of your needs

That you won’t let show

You just call on me brother, when you need a hand

We all need somebody to lean on

I just might have a problem that you’ll understand