Ultimately, we learned (or at least some of us did) that if we look after each other, we can get through these kinds of things together. We learned the lesson that humans learn again and again about ourselves (and seem to need to learn again and again): that “the worst of times can often bring out the best in us.”56 We learned that resilience isn’t

What startled me about the response to disaster was not the virtue, since virtue is often the result of diligence and dutifulness, but the passionate joy that shined out from accounts by people who had barely survived. These people who had lost everything, who were living in rubble or ruins, had found agency, meaning, community, immediacy in their

spouse, rather than the patient): “We’re gonna fight and beat this thing, Doc.” The armament varies, from prayer to wealth to herbs to stem cells. To me, that hardness always seems brittle, unrealistic optimism the only alternative to crushing despair.