She is terrified by the impending shortage of chemotherapy; even the cancer center he receives treatment at has been severely damaged by the blast. What do we tell the mother who has been laid off? She knows that, with losing her job, the entire family lost their healthcare coverage. What do we tell the hundreds of parents who lost their children and the hundreds of children who lost their parents as a result of incompetence, bureaucracy, and political corruption? When will we be angry enough with them and for them, with ourselves and for ourselves? One of the rivers that run north of Beirut is believed to have carried the blood of the Phoenician god Adonis to the Mediterranean Sea. Legend has it that Adonis was killed by a wild boar in the forest. Like Adonis, Lebanon has been bleeding; COVID-19 and the Beirut explosion have certainly hastened the hemorrhage. But, isnʼt the wild boar, in this situation, our inaction for years in the face of social injustice, political corruption, and shortsighted sectarianism? Have we failed to see the humanity in our neighbors until our very basic needs of food, shelter, medicine, physical safety, and education were at stake-just like them? When will we place our basic rights and wellbeing ahead of our sectarian and political affiliations? When will our health, mental and physical, become more important than perpetuating political and financial practices that have failed to deliver for decades? Some of us, Lebanese people, are a sea, an ocean, and a thousand lakes away, waiting for our loved ones to pick up the phone and tell us they are safe. Some of us are living this reality firsthand every day in the heart of Beirut, opening our eyes every day to destruction and calamity that were avoidable, unjustified, and unnecessary. Will we emerge from this crisis with more debt accumulated, more lives lost, but no lessons learned? Will inequality be made only more extreme as the socioeconomically underprivileged lose their assets and as healthcare out-of-pocket payments increase? Or, will we grasp this opportunity to reform our political structure and our public healthcare system? We worry that we will be satisfied with a partially refurbished version of the current status quo. We nonetheless hope that we, the people of Lebanon living in the country and abroad, will find in the midst of this turmoil an opportunity for true and fundamental rebirth-just like Adonis.