Graduation 2020: The Covid Class

Jun 01, 2020

The 2020 graduating class faces challenges unlike any class before it. Uncertainty looms at every turn: job prospects, social interactions, and many other aspects of “normal life” once taken for granted. So what lessons can be learned from this unparalleled situation? Dennis Prager offers three.

Study Guide

Within just 10 weeks of the U.S. going on “lockdown” over COVID-19, more than 42 million Americans lost their jobs.: In mid-March 2020, many U.S. states began to impose “stay-at-home” orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Within 10 weeks, more than 42 million Americans had filed new unemployment claims. A majority of those weeks saw more than 3 million Americans file jobless claims. During the worst week of the crisis, 6.9 million Americans lost their jobs.
View source; The previous record for new unemployment claims in a single week was 695,000 in October 1982.
View source; The shutdown in economic activity caused the U.S. economy to shrink dramatically, economists predicting that the GDP would contract by as much as 40% in the second quarter of 2020 after falling by nearly 5% in the first quarter.
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In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, government officials imposed strict social-distancing orders that curbed citizens’ civil liberties.: The COVID-19 crisis of 2020 featured a majority of governors imposing strict social-distancing orders, including “stay-at-home” or “safer-at-home” orders and shutdowns of entire industries.
View source; One of the results of these orders was the widespread suppression of citizens’ civil liberties, including some officials clamping down on protests and heavily restricting church services, which were deemed “unessential.”
View source; The targeting of religious organizations prompted civil liberties groups to file lawsuits against state officials.
View source; The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution forbids the government from violating citizens’ free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, and peaceful assembly.
View source; Related reading: “We the People, in Order to Defeat the Coronavirus” – The New York Times Editorial Board
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Freedom is fragile. In times of crisis, government will expand its power if citizens do not keep the government in check.: In times of crisis, governments tend to expand their control over citizens — and as government increases, liberty decreases.
View source; When people get used to turning to the government for help as a first resort rather than a last resort, they tend to become less able to take care of themselves, more entitled, more ungrateful, disdainful of work, and increasingly selfish. The same principle applies to helping others. As the state gets bigger, individuals do less to help their fellows citizens.
View source; Related reading: “The Legitimate Role of Government in a Free Society” – Walter Williams
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Gratitude is the source of both happiness and goodness.: Research shows that developing habits of gratitude, being thankful for what we have and are given, leads to greater life satisfaction.
View source; Gratitude leads to better physical, psychological and relational heath. In other words, grateful people are happier people.
View source; Happiness is a moral obligation. Happy people generally make the world a better place on both a micro and macro level.
View source; Unhappy people, on the other hand, often damage others’ lives.
View source; Related reading: “Happiness Is a Serious Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual” – Dennis Prager
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Gratitude is a moral obligation.: Gratitude is the source of happiness, and, as Dennis Prager maintains, a happy disposition “is a moral obligation.” Those who refuse to embrace a happy attitude “frequently ruin the lives of those around them. They cast a pall over their son or daughter’s childhood, they ruin their marriages, and they can make their parents despondent... In the macro realm, the unhappy often do even more damage. Those who became Nazis or communists were not happy people. Happy Muslims don’t become suicide bombers — the very fact that they want to murder and die in order to be rewarded in the afterlife is a testament to how little joy they experience in this life.”
View source; WATCH: Dennis Prager on the “happiness equation.”
View source; Related reading: “Happiness is a Moral Obligation” – Dennis Prager, Townhall
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We are living in a unique time. You are therefore a unique graduating class. You may well be known forever as “the Covid Class.”

For the first time in history, billions of people, including healthy people and people living in free societies, have been confined to their homes. So let me offer you three lessons about life based on what you’ve experienced.

Number one: Life is hard. It’s unfair. It’s unpredictable.

Until now, most young people, at least in the West, did not appreciate how true this is. You’ve been living in a time and place in which so many of life’s hardships have been overcome. You’ve probably lived a healthier, safer, and freer existence than almost any young people who ever lived before you.

And if that is true, you would only know about how hard life is if you’ve read about the sufferings of others, such as the awful suffering people endured during World Wars I and II, not to mention the starvation and disease of the medieval and ancient worlds.

Because of the hardships caused by the coronavirus—including the shattering of millions of people’s livelihoods and dreams throughout the world—you’ve come to sense how hard life is. And that understanding equips you to deal much better with life's challenges—which are inevitable.

Number two: Always be grateful.

Gratitude is probably the most important trait you can have—because it is the source of both happiness and goodness. In other words, you cannot be either a happy person or a good person unless you are a grateful person.

Unfortunately, most people don’t learn how important gratitude is until it’s too late. I’ll bet this makes a lot more sense to you now, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. How often have you thought of the good old days when you could go to a restaurant with friends, or to a sporting event or concert, or visit a relative you love? But were you grateful for those things when you were able to do them? Probably not.

So now, make this promise to yourself: I will not wait until I lose the good things in my life to be grateful for having them. Or, to put it another way, adopt an attitude that has guided me all of my life: If nothing’s horrific, life is terrific.

Most people wait for something wonderful to happen to be happy. My view has always been that instead of waiting for something great to happen to be happy, I will be happy until something awful happens.

Number three: Freedom is fragile. Very fragile.

The ease with which most Americans acquiesced to the removal of many of their most basic rights—even if you agree with that removal—should take your breath away. At the very least, it should make you realize how easily any government can take away people’s most elementary freedoms. This happened around the world, but I single out America because no country has been so free for so long. America, more than any country, has symbolized liberty. That’s why France gave America—and no other country—the Statue of Liberty.

Yet people living in states with fewer deaths from the coronavirus than from car accidents acquiesced to living under house arrest except to get food or medicine, being barred from walking outside with more than one other person, and being barred from walking their dog without wearing a face mask. Remarkably, they acquiesced to all this as they watched their life savings, their family business, or their job disappear.

Now, again, you may agree that this should have been done even in states with almost no deaths due to the coronavirus. I don’t. But that’s not the issue here. The issue is how easily modern governments can become police states. In sophisticated New York City, the mayor appealed to people to send the police photos of fellow citizens gathering in groups of more than two or not wearing a face mask outside.

You may think all this was reasonable. But what is to stop governments from doing such things when you don’t think it’s reasonable?

If there are any silver linings to the coronavirus shutdown of the world’s economic and social life, one would be the opportunity to learn life-enriching lessons. So I offered you three:

Life is hard. Always be grateful. And freedom is fragile.

I’m Dennis Prager.

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