A few days into the new year, we saw a meme that read: “2022 feels like that boyfriend we’re about to take back for the third time because he swears he’s changed.” When we first read it, we laughed. And then we sighed.

Last week, on their official Twitter account, Delta Airlines tweeted: “Name a city that changed your life.” It seemed an innocent enough question. The top response, however, probably wasn’t what Delta was hoping for. The top response was “Wuhan,” and it received four times as many likes as the original post itself.

As we’ve personally endured COVID the past couple of weeks, the symptoms have lingered longer than we anticipated, especially the overall body aches, headaches and fatigue. For people who are normally very active, the abruptness and length of the physical deceleration caused by COVID – especially this “mild” strain – has taken us by surprise. It has also given us the time and opportunity to do something we don’t normally do: watch television.

We happened upon a show this week that for its plot recreated New Year’s Eve 2019 and the first three months of 2020. Honestly, going down this memory lane was uncomfortable and felt far too soon for our liking.

As the ball dropped in Times Square, they counted down the last 60 seconds of 2019. As they counted down the seconds, the camera panned to the Times Square news screen behind them where they scrolled the words “Novel Coronavirus discovered in Wuhan, China.” I felt myself wanting to hit the pause button – both literally and figuratively. I wasn’t sure I wanted to watch a fictitious depiction of COVID-19, let alone two years later while very sick from COVID-19.

I remember times when I was a child and wishing I had a crystal ball to see into the future. What was I going to be when I grew up? Who would I marry? Would I have children? Where would I live? It never crossed my mind to ask such questions as: What would be the state of the world? Would there be a war? Wars? Would there be a pandemic?

I do, however, remember my mother telling me that a crystal ball wouldn’t be a gift at all. That advice and counsel was hard for a young mind to understand. It’s an answer, though, born from wisdom and life experience.

Well, we didn’t push pause on the aforementioned TV show. We kept watching. As the show entered the third month of 2020, one of the main characters contracted COVID and became very, very sick. While she didn’t require hospitalization, the character said it was the sickest she could ever recall being in her lifetime, and that it felt as if her body was fighting the virus, like a fire, from the inside out. Yes, to all of that. That has been our experience too.

Then she began asking if others believed in life after death because she wasn’t sure that she believed that. She wasn’t sure she believed this life wasn’t “the end.” As she said it, you could see the fear on her face.

As I watched that scene, I did press the pause button. It occurred to me that perhaps the difference in the way people have responded to COVID-19 has very much to do with their personal beliefs or disbeliefs in life after death.

Our family is a family of faith. We very much believe in life after death. We believe this earthly existence is only a brief part of an eternal journey. But what if we didn’t believe that? Would it have caused us to view COVID-19 and this pandemic differently? Maybe so. It’s a perfect example of the Walt Whitman quote we referenced in one of our first columns: “Be curious, not judgmental.”

If we truly listened to understand rather than simply waiting to reply, how different would our world be? We wouldn’t need a crystal ball to foresee that a world where people seek to understand each other is a more peaceful and hopeful one than what we are experiencing today. (And, yes, it goes without saying that this is a lesson needed by us personally as much as it is for anyone reading this column today.) Nothing changes until we do, and certainly nothing improves until we improve.