Virus
I've decided the only way I can figure out to relate to this virus is to write about it, and, with all this time trapped at home, let the relating begin.
I think I'd like to begin with the idea of the virus as a mirror. It has been reflecting so many things back to me.
Mirror, mirror:
1) Anxiety - I was talking with a friend about this. The last few days have felt very familiar and almost eerily calm in my own head. I think this is because there is already so much anxiety in the world...this feels relatively normal, albeit a new kind of anxious.
2) Selfishness - This has shown me how easily I can get focused on myself when I feel threatened or upset.
3) The Fear is its own virus - I have watched myself be fully taken in by fear. I felt my throat close from anxiety. I have forgotten that I actually don't trust politicians to save me, or to comfort me, or to be there for me when no one else is. There are other No one has control. So, that uncertainty and fear is passed from host to host, and has already infected many more people faster than the actual virus ever could.
4) Helplessness - Because of the lack of anyone having real control and general uncertainty on action steps, I think this particular mirror has made me see my own limitations so clearly that it hurts. It has made me see how dependent I am on other people: farmers, my family, people that make toilet paper, and comedians, to keep doing what they are doing. I'm not really sure if I can keep doing what I'm doing for long, but who really knows.
5) Seeing how little I actually want to see - I don't like most of what is being reflected back to me.
BUT
6) Hope - Regardless of where you stand in politics and religious beliefs and what shows you choose to binge in quarantine, this virus has sparked some outrageous selflessness and adaptation in humans to help each other and respond with kindness and self-reflection. This gives me a lot of hope.
7) Isolation - To be alone and disconnected from who I am and the people I love is what I most fear. Aloneness is also the place I am restored to fullness and a sense of self. A lot of pain and hurt is being caused by our whole society's screeching swerve; the apparent choice between duty and necessity, and the halting of the way we get from one day to the next. There is also a strange beauty in being forced to stop and change our routines.
This virus is not the only frightening, time sensitive crisis that we as a country and a world are facing, and my hidden hope is that this virus with all its pain and destruction also has a few things to teach me like, what do I really value? What can I live without?
It makes me wonder what we as a larger community can start to move towards. Could it be something unified? Could it teach us how to take on a problem as a world and not as dissonant isolated groups?
This is a frightening time.
It is also a time to pause and see what we want our "normal lives" to be if we ever return to them. Will they be the same?
I think I'd like to begin with the idea of the virus as a mirror. It has been reflecting so many things back to me.
Mirror, mirror:
1) Anxiety - I was talking with a friend about this. The last few days have felt very familiar and almost eerily calm in my own head. I think this is because there is already so much anxiety in the world...this feels relatively normal, albeit a new kind of anxious.
2) Selfishness - This has shown me how easily I can get focused on myself when I feel threatened or upset.
3) The Fear is its own virus - I have watched myself be fully taken in by fear. I felt my throat close from anxiety. I have forgotten that I actually don't trust politicians to save me, or to comfort me, or to be there for me when no one else is. There are other No one has control. So, that uncertainty and fear is passed from host to host, and has already infected many more people faster than the actual virus ever could.
4) Helplessness - Because of the lack of anyone having real control and general uncertainty on action steps, I think this particular mirror has made me see my own limitations so clearly that it hurts. It has made me see how dependent I am on other people: farmers, my family, people that make toilet paper, and comedians, to keep doing what they are doing. I'm not really sure if I can keep doing what I'm doing for long, but who really knows.
5) Seeing how little I actually want to see - I don't like most of what is being reflected back to me.
BUT
6) Hope - Regardless of where you stand in politics and religious beliefs and what shows you choose to binge in quarantine, this virus has sparked some outrageous selflessness and adaptation in humans to help each other and respond with kindness and self-reflection. This gives me a lot of hope.
7) Isolation - To be alone and disconnected from who I am and the people I love is what I most fear. Aloneness is also the place I am restored to fullness and a sense of self. A lot of pain and hurt is being caused by our whole society's screeching swerve; the apparent choice between duty and necessity, and the halting of the way we get from one day to the next. There is also a strange beauty in being forced to stop and change our routines.
This virus is not the only frightening, time sensitive crisis that we as a country and a world are facing, and my hidden hope is that this virus with all its pain and destruction also has a few things to teach me like, what do I really value? What can I live without?
It makes me wonder what we as a larger community can start to move towards. Could it be something unified? Could it teach us how to take on a problem as a world and not as dissonant isolated groups?
This is a frightening time.
It is also a time to pause and see what we want our "normal lives" to be if we ever return to them. Will they be the same?
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