3/31 Covid-19 Update: "Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation"
I've been thinking for the last several days about this twitter thread I saw where a woman who lives in NYC helpfully tried to explain what she learned navigating the healthcare system as a caretaker for her boyfriend who was very sick from covid. It was advice on how not to clog hospitals, what medicines made him feel better, why it's important to keep a log of symptoms, and when they knew it was time to seek urgent assistance. And the first response to her post was from a person who said, "I resent this take, What about those without caretakers/living alone?" Essentially shaming this woman for her own personal experience (and desire to share information that might be useful to someone else). If our first reaction to someone's fear and sickness and hardship is resentment - to ask them to always and forever admit before any expression of personal frustration or sadness or worry that there's someone else out there who has it worse - then I think we're kind of doomed. There's not a lot of space for humanity or love in resentment like that.
"Love is the last thing we need to ration right now. Comparative suffering is dangerous. Empathy is not finite. When we practice empathy, we create more empathy. The exhausted ER doctor doesn't benefit more if you reserve your empathy only for her and ignore your feelings or withhold empathy from someone lower on the "suffering scale" Hurt is hurt, and every time we honor our own struggle and the struggle of others by responding with empathy, the healing that results affects all of us." - Brene Brown
Recommended Reading:
A game plan to end social distancing: The best thing I've read that matches the Gates Foundation's assessment of what it will take to start lifting some of the social distancing measures and get back to a more "normal" life. Tl;dr: Better data, faster and more widespread testing, better systems to get medical supplies to the places that need them, a way to track infections among frontline healthcare workers, better technology. We're likely months away still from these things being in place, and it's hard to imagine those things happening without a coordinated federal response.
This thread is hard to read, but helped me better understand the situation a lot of Americans are in right now-- they're hungry, and foregoing food so that their kids can still eat, and they don't know where their next meal is going to come from. There was video last night of hundreds of cars waiting in line for 5 hours to get food from a food bank in Pittsburgh. If you want to donate to food banks in Seattle, here's a link
We're finding out how small our lives really are: There are of course a huge number of people who don’t have the luxury of boredom right now. There are people who thrive on staying put. But for others, what’s trippy about isolation is not simply the loss of face-to-face contact and communal spaces. It’s the way it closes off a crucial psychic space and crowds us back onto terrain that may have been ignored, or only lightly tended to. I have realized that I’ve always thought of my life as a project under construction—something constantly becoming something else, through the playful work of meeting people and going places and scheming projects. But there are no new friends in a pandemic. No exciting plans to be made. There’s almost nowhere to go, psychologically, but backwards and inward.
A choir decided to go ahead with rehearsal. Now dozens of members have COVID-19 and two are dead: A story in the LA Times about how a March 10 choir rehearsal in Skagit County is being held up as a national example of just how easily the virus can spread in social settings, even when precautions are taken.
The coronavirus is a disaster for feminism: A pandemic magnifies all existing inequalities (even as politicians insist this is not the time to talk about anything other than the immediate crisis). Working from home in a white-collar job is easier; employees with salaries and benefits will be better protected; self-isolation is less taxing in a spacious house than a cramped apartment. But one of the most striking effects of the coronavirus will be to send many couples back to the 1950s. Across the world, women’s independence will be a silent victim of the pandemic.
Things that made me feel better/less alone:
Michael Jordan series on ESPN, 'The Last Dance,' moved up to April (aka: the best news I've gotten in weeks)
Astrophysicist gets magnets stuck up nose while inventing coronavirus device: “My partner took me to the hospital that she works in because she wanted all her colleagues to laugh at me. The doctors thought it was quite funny, making comments like ‘This is an injury due to self-isolation and boredom.’” Medical records from the emergency department said that Reardon did not have difficulty breathing, and denied the presence of further magnets up his nose.The astrophysicist told Guardian Australia he had ruled out further experiments with the magnets and face-touching
Dolly Parton to Read Children’s Books in New Series ‘Goodnight With Dolly’: Dolly Parton has announced a new video series entitled “Goodnight With Dolly,” featuring the country superstar reading aloud from children’s books on Thursday evenings. The series will launch April 2nd at 7:00 p.m. EST, on the YouTube channel for Parton’s Imagination Library, and will run for 10 weeks.
"Due to Corona, we officially have three days of the week: 1) Yesterday 2) Today 3) Tomorrow" @JennEngineer
"SCRAM. GO HOME. AND STAY THERE!!!" -@OscarTheGrouch
Covid-19 Poem of the Day:
Everything is Waiting For You
Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
-David Whyte
There are still daffodils blooming in Seattle. Hope you have some where you are too.
Alison
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