Mettā, Responsibility, and My Vaccine
Lovingkindness calls us to accountability for the world we create for each other.
With yesterday’s news that Pfizer has asked federal regulators in the United States to grant emergency authorization for the administration of its COVID-19 vaccine to children between 5 to 11 years of age,1 the opportunity to get my own kids vaccinated against COVID-19 finally seems near. At the same time, people in some parts of the world have little or no access to the vaccines. Below, I share how the experience of getting my second COVID-19 vaccine dose spurred in me a deeper understanding of my interdependence with others and the responsibility that follows, and what I’m trying to make of that responsibility in my own life.
With loving-kindness for the whole world should one / Cultivate a boundless heart, / . . . / May one stay with this recollection.2
- Mettā Sutta, translated by Gil Fronsdal.
Jonathan rubbed alcohol on my left shoulder. “You ready?”
“I’ve been ready for three weeks,” I quipped. “Since my first dose!”
Jonathan laughed, pinched a bit of my shoulder tissue toward him, and poked my second dose of COVID-19 vaccine into my arm.
“I’m not looking forward to the recovery, though. My wife slept for two days after getting hers.”
“I think you’ll be OK,” Jonathan offered gamely, putting a bandage on the spot. He handed me my completed vaccine card and directed me to the post-injection observation area.
“Thank you for taking care of us,” I said.
I made my way to the observation area and chose an empty seat among the many that were spaced apart in the Levi’s Stadium concession stand. Through the wide stretch of window before me, the football field and stands stood empty, the scoreboard thanking us for getting vaccinated. It was May 2021.
I reached without thinking for the smartphone in my pocket: that was how I’d passed the time after my first shot. But I stopped, my hand not yet grasping the phone, when I heard the woman at my left talking happily on her own phone with a friend, making plans. With her second vaccine dose now in her arm, she seemed to be feeling the same lightness and giddiness that I was. Did she also feel the same anxiety about re-opening to life? In that moment, it struck me that each of us in the observation area was feeling some blend of hope and nerves as we looked to our respective futures, and I was curious about what all those futures might be.
I also recognized that this was an important moment to dwell upon. Too rarely, if I’m being completely honest, am I consciously and intently aware that every other person around me is undergoing a unique and irreplaceable flow of experience as deep and textured as my own: experiences that are distinctly theirs, flush with their own meanings and responsibilities. Though I aspire for this intuition to underlie my everyday actions, it’s not every day that the fundamental worth and dignity of every person rises to the top of my attention, above the usual strata of habits, internal dialogues, and all the rest. This awakening of my senses to the depth of others was a moment for pausing.
Instead of taking out my phone, I closed my eyes to meditate silently and simply be present for all that was happening around me. I began by holding an open awareness of the busy space around me: the movements of people in and out of seats; the easy conversation of two volunteers at my right who directed people to open chairs and gave out “I got vaccinated” stickers; the conversations of the people seated nearest to me, whether over a phone or with the young children and loved ones who accompanied them. I wondered what each person looked forward to doing, once the second vaccine dose took full effect. I was grateful to be among them, and grateful that each had taken a step that would protect me and my kids, as my own vaccination would protect them and their loved ones. Feeling this gratitude, a subtle weight began to lift from my shoulders.
Drawn by this feeling of connection, I pivoted from open awareness to lovingkindness (or mettā) meditation, which cultivates benevolence and compassion toward oneself and others through the silent repetition of certain phrases that express kind intention. I began repeating two such phrases silently in mind, directed toward the caregivers, volunteers, fellow vaccine-recipients, and other people around me.
May you all be healthy. May you all be well.
The first phrase, may you all be healthy, contained my hope for each person’s stirring immune defenses, so our community might venture slowly back toward each other.
May you all be healthy. May you all be well.
The second phrase, may you all be well, contained my hope that each person would enjoy a more balanced and nourishing life, whatever that might entail.
May you all be healthy. May you all be well.
As I repeated the phrases, I realized that I’d excluded myself from my own circle of concern. Cultivating a kind regard toward oneself is an essential part of lovingkindness meditation, because it enables us to imagine and respond to the joy and pain of others more generously. I shifted the object of my mantra from “you” to “we.”
May we all be healthy. May we all be well.
When my observation time was finished, I stood up and made my way to the exit. As I walked along the outdoor concourse, the empty stadium at one side, I noticed that the mantra was still repeating in my head, a benevolent loop turning of its own accord.
May we all be healthy. May we all be well.
I paused in wonder: this football field was usually a site for collisions between grown men, but today, it was a site of lovingkindness, each of us here for ourselves, our families, and our community; each of us empowered to do so by the collective action of countless doctors and researchers, civil servants, and distributors. Even a person getting vaccinated for purely selfish reasons was safeguarding the well-being of others.
I moved down the stairs and through the stadium gate, toward the parking lot. I maintained a generous distance between myself and the young couple ahead of me. But I was not disconnected from them: that benevolent loop continued at the edge of my attention, drawing that couple into the widening circle of my concern.
May we all be healthy. May we all be well.
The couple joined hands as they entered the parking lot. I wondered what they were talking about; what they were looking forward to; what each had found in the other.
May we all be healthy. May we all be well.
I drove home, wanting dearly to tell others about what I’d experienced and capture in words, however inadequately, this direct encounter with the interdependent web that creates and upholds life.
Back at home, life was already making other plans. My family’s pandemic puppy, whose soft, luxurious hair gathers up anything it touches, had gotten sick while I was away, and upon entering the house, my frazzled wife handed me the dog and told me to give it a bath. I washed our puppy’s hair patiently and cooed to her in a light, playful voice, riding a deeper current of equanimity than I can normally access with such ease. But before long, I was swept up in the routines and churn of a typical pandemic Saturday, keeping up with the kids, making lunch, and so forth.
At some point in that swirl of activity, I reached again without thinking for my smartphone during an idle moment, and this time, I began to scroll through the news. I read about the pandemic’s deepening toll in India, where the Buddha had sat and meditated beneath the Bodhi Tree in Bodh Gaya so many years ago. I would soon learn that, on the day of my second vaccine dose, India reported about 401,000 new COVID-19 cases, and nearly 4,200 Indians died from the disease, according to the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Dashboard.3 At that time, the percentage of people who had received at least one vaccine dose was almost 5 times higher in the United States than in India. (Currently, as I write this, the percentage remains nearly 20 points higher in the U.S. than in India.)
My powerful experience of opening toward others at Levi’s Stadium came crashing down: it felt completely inconsequential in the face of such inequity. My experience of connection felt less like a blessing and more like a scarce commodity that Americans like me could choose to enjoy or reject, while so many around the world can only wait for the chance. My own anxiety from a month earlier, when I’d waited patiently for “my turn” to get vaccinated, seemed a privilege. And that benevolent loop that had turned within me, which I’d wanted so dearly to share, felt quaint and naïve, as if another internal voice were saying: How nice for you, Matt, that you got to have that experience. Lucky you. Who cares?
Five days later, a video conversation with a dear friend—the person whose example first drew me to meditation, in fact—shone a new light on my confusion. Each of us, he counseled, must learn to embrace our experiences from multiple, sometimes-dissonant perspectives at once. My experience of interdependence had been grounded authentically in the realities of my time and place, living as I do in a community where the systems of vaccine production and distribution are working to my benefit. At the same time, my perspective is unavoidably conditioned by my fortunate position within a still-larger system of global inequities. Both are true. The question is: can I accept the truth of both and take responsibility for my actions in their dual light?
Not long after, I told my wife that I was struggling with whether to write about my experience of interdependence; that I doubted whether it would be meaningful or helpful. She pushed me to take responsibility and do it. The brute fact of privilege cannot mean that we stop learning from one another, she said. Rather, it means we must dig for deeper meaning and learn to do something new.
So, here we are, five months later. As I write this, the U.S. seems on the verge of granting emergency authorization for the vaccination of children ages 5–11—an event that parents like me have been waiting for anxiously. The U.S. has already begun offering booster vaccines to older and vulnerable Americans, and some politicians have pushed for booster vaccines for more Americans besides. At the same time, global inequities in vaccine availability are more glaring than ever. As the WHO’s regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, called out in a September opinion piece in The New York Times, only 3.6% of Africa’s population is fully vaccinated at present.4 Indeed, at the time of this writing, fewer than 10% of people have received any vaccine doses across large portions of the African continent, according to the WHO COVID-19 Dashboard.5 And the longer that peoples around the world must wait, the more plentiful will be the virus’s opportunities to mutate and become more transmissible and more deadly.
When I think now about that May day when I received my second COVID-19 vaccine dose, I don’t think only about my experience of interdependence at Levi’s Stadium. I linger, too, on the alienation that followed, when I recognized the exclusivity of that experience. I now understand that this, too, is a necessary moment in the practice of living with lovingkindness in an inequitable world. By cultivating in us the benevolent disposition to discern the inherent worth and dignity of every person, lovingkindness calls us to accountability for the world we create for each other. We become responsible for our actions.
I confess outright: I’m still struggling to discern what I can do with this responsibility. I’m still only one guy, without expertise in epidemiology, biotechnology, or large-scale distribution networks. But I do know I’m not the only American who feels more deeply now than before the pandemic that my welfare and flourishing are bound intimately with the welfare and flourishing of people I will never meet, in places I may never visit. I also know that I can write.
COVID-19 science and practice will continue to evolve, and my perspective will evolve with it, as it must, but at this moment, here’s where I’m at:
When COVID-19 vaccines for children in the U.S. receive emergency authorization, I’ll get my kids vaccinated as quickly as I can. That, I will do as both a dad and a citizen, just as I got myself vaccinated. Doing so contributes to the resilience of my community, and it strengthens my kids’ capacities for a healthy future.
As a global citizen and (for now) healthy person, I would happily forego a near-term COVID-19 booster shot for myself, in favor of distributing vaccines more equitably around the world. Perhaps COVID-19 booster shots will become routine one day, if needed. But if so, a world in which all of us are empowered to routinely boost our immunity is far better and safer for all than a world in which many peoples never even get the chance.
If my kids are to understand the fundamental truth of their interdependence with others, and if they are to learn to reckon with what it means to take responsibility for that interdependence, then the adults in their lives—including their dad—must do the same.
May we all be healthy. May we all be well.
NOTE: I highly recommend digging into the global data on the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Dashboard map. If, like me, you live in a nation with ready access to COVID-19 vaccines, the Dashboard map helps put my and your privilege in perspective.
Sharon LaFraniere and Noah Weiland, “Pfizer Asks F.D.A. to Authorize Its Covid-19 Vaccine for Children 5 to 11,” The New York Times, Oct. 7, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/07/us/politics/pfizer-fda-authorization-children-5-11.html
Mettā Sutta, translated by Gil Fronsdal, Insight Meditation Center, Redwood City, California. https://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/metta-sutta/
World Health Organization COVID-19 Dashboard. https://covid19.who.int/
Matshidiso Moeti, “Rich Countries Worry About Booster Shots. They Should Be Worried About Africa,” The New York Times, Sept. 19, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/19/opinion/covid-vaccine-booster-shots-africa.html
World Health Organization COVID-19 Dashboard. https://covid19.who.int/