BLEACH WIPES AND MIXED VEGETABLES:
RECOGNIZING “BEAUTY BY MISTAKE” DURING PANDEMIC TIMES
Suzanne E. McGee, MD
“D
r. McGee, you always seem
so happy. What’s your se-
cret?” muses a nurse on
one of the nursing units.
Many people think my
frequent smiling means I
am happy and have it all
together, all the time. I do enjoy my job as
a hospitalist and medical educator and do indeed smile a lot, but
there are many days beneath that smile when anxiety, frustration,
anger and a myriad of other emotions fight for my attention. Like
most health care workers, I have been experiencing the mental and
emotional burden of this coronavirus pandemic. As an internist and
type A personality, I go around imagining worst-case scenarios in
their grimmest reality. I worry about my patients, my colleagues on
the frontlines and my family, especially my parents. I worry about
the old stooped-over man at the grocery store, defenseless against
this nasty virus. I worry about people who suffer from psychiatric
disorders, substance use disorders and social isolation. The uncer-
tainty surrounding this disease is relentlessly unsettling.
As I was walking my dog Drew one night, worries about the
coronavirus pandemic swirled in my never-quiet mind. My music
playlist was on shuffle—I was just trying to distract myself. The in-
credibly catchy song Pocketful of Sunshine by Natasha Bedingfield
started playing and jolted me into a new awareness. I was haunted
by the chorus’ wistful lyrics: “Take me away (take me away), To
better days (to better days), Take me away (Take me away), A hiding
place (a hiding place)…” I wanted to escape the madness: hop on
a plane to somewhere beautiful (and unpopulated), or travel back
to a safer time. My rational brain kicked itself back into gear and
reminded me that 1. There is no such place and 2. That would be
selfish. This is life. I am trained to respond to crises like this. I am
made for this. There is still so much beauty to experience in life,
even through its ugliness.
I started really noticing the beauty of the flowering trees and the
dusky sky. I savored the smell of burning firewood in the pleasant,
damp, cool air. Almost every person who walked or drove past
me and my handsome sidekick dog (dressed in a dapper sweater,
of course) smiled, said hello or waved. I felt a kinship with total
strangers that I have never felt before. Something had changed, and
it was not just my mindset. Even in the early days of this pandemic,
many people were becoming more interconnected than ever before.
It was beautiful.
In the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, author Milan
Kudera discusses the concept of “beauty by mistake.” In the context
of the “beauty” of New York, he remarks, “It’s unintentional. It arose
independent of human design, like a stalagmitic cavern. Forms
which are in themselves quite ugly turn up fortuitously, without
design, in such incredible surroundings that they sparkle with a
sudden wondrous poetry. Unintentional beauty. Yes. Another way of
putting it might be “beauty by mistake.” This COVID-19 pandemic
is ugly and awful, and it will get worse. But, from uncertainty, fear
and suffering also comes beauty and goodness. I encourage you
to look for the unintentional beauty that springs forth from this
pandemic. It is there, if you are looking for it.
As Fr. Gregory Boyle puts it in his book Tattoos on the Heart,
“Mother Teresa diagnosed the world’s ills in this way: we’ve just
‘forgotten that we belong to each other.’ Kinship is what happens
to us when we refuse to let that happen.” I see so many people rec-
ognize their kinship with one another. I saw kinship when a man
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APRIL 2020
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