Latency

Latency: waiting just beyond the horizon, waiting to emerge.

Latent, hidden or concealed, dormant, waiting to emerge: I had a stroke 2 1/2 years ago, and since then, I have not written much. I often wondered if I would write again, if I could write again. It was quite a journey to learn to hold a pencil and form letters on the page. It was like visiting my four-year-old self again as I drew large block capital letters with wiggly lines. Now, after lots of practice, I’m back to cursive writing, just about as illegible as it was before the stroke.

Also, I had to get back to forming ideas, putting them in some logical format—organizing them, making sense of them. I had to form new pathways to reconnect the disconnected cupboards and closets of memory.

I am happy to be writing again, and making discoveries from day to day. It is good to know that this ability, which was disabled and moved to dormancy for a while, has re-emerged and been reconnected, at least enough to help me put thoughts on a page. This move from latency to activity, to become lytic again (from Greek lytikos, meaning to be able to loosen, from lyein), is part of our brain’s neuroplasticity, its ability to rewire or form new connections over time. This happens when we are pushed or push ourselves to our limits. We feel like we’re hitting the wall, stressed, so to say, but what is happening is our brain is rewiring itself, making pathways for the new knowledge. We feel confused until we wake up one morning and all the hard work we’ve put into it suddenly makes sense. A pathway is connected again. And for me, this means, I can write and compose again, and this time, a blog.

Latency and reactivation is one of several phases of life. Another, one we’re more familiar with, is active growth, which happens early in our lives at rapid paces, and then at a certain stage, it abates, and we slow down, and settle in to a more silent and quiet persistent reproductive mode, replicating and renewing our cells as we age.

When reactivation from a latent state (especially regarding neuroplasticity) is triggered by stress, most often the stress of hard work—that kind of hit-the-wall type of stress—we see change, sometimes rapid and hopefully persistent change.

But today, I learned today is that this process has a dark side in life. I was stunned when I read that viruses work this way, too. They can have a lytic, active stage when we’re infected, followed by what we think of as immunity. Think of getting the chicken pox, what that felt like. But then, the virus goes dormant, and later can re-emerge and reactivate, triggered by a stressor in some people as shingles, a painful rash. But a virus can also produce a persistent infection, a silent productive type of existence, hidden, unnoticed, asymptomatic.

What we don’t know enough about is how COVID19, the virus we’re challenged with today, will behave, how it is behaving. This is why more research is needed. This is why we need to be careful.

Latency can prove positive, when working toward good. But it can be horrible, when on the dark side. I’ve experienced the good side of latency. I do not want to experience the horrible side of latency. Or this virus. And I’m betting you don’t either. Take care, my friend.