4/19 Covid-19 Update: "the radical idea that each of us matter"
I've been thinking a lot about how I might be experiencing quarantine differently if I weren't working on covid. If I was just doing my normal foundation job, I would have hardly anything to do right now (all of my normal work has essentially stopped). Some of my friends have started complaining about being bored. Would I be bored? I sometimes feel restless or malaised or claustrophobic (what a combo!) - but I haven't felt boredom yet (I used to live in fear of boredom - it was the worst thing I could imagine, and I built my life to avoid it. When it struck, I was miserable), and it's kind of hard to imagine it now, given this weird, all-consuming job I have and the way that life just seems to pick up speed the older you get.
I do think I'd be a lot lonelier without this job. Usually I enjoy living by myself -- I like being in charge of my own time and decisions. And I'm usually so busy with work, friends, travel, family, etc that I've really come to treasure having a quiet home base to come back to (proof that I am in fact, not 100% an extrovert 😊). But there's so much noise in my brain right now that my condo definitely doesn't feel quiet or empty (for better or worse). But if I didn't have this weird job to distract and occupy me --- I can only imagine how much even more lonely I'd be feeling right now. The quiet and solitude of "home" always existed in opposition/relationship to the busyness outside --- now the solitude feels endless. I had gotten so much better at being alone, but I think that's partially because it felt like "aloneness" was a choice. I really miss the feeling of having more choices. Is there any way that privilege shows up more than in amount of choices that are available to us?
I was reading this article last night that tells the stories of seven different women - ages 24 to 86 - who are living alone right now: "This removes almost all the advantages of living alone and amplifies all the hard parts."
I defintely think that's true - but I also think that might be true for anyone's situation right now? The hard parts feel ampified...of parenting, co-parenting, remote work, screen time, educational inequity, loneliness, navigating roommate and relationship dynamics, equitably dividing labor... just generally co-existing wiht ourselves and others? I know there are a lot of good parts too - I feel those personally as well - but if something was hard two months ago, I imagine it feels harder now.
AHP wrote about this in her newsletter today that's a draft foreword for her new book on millennial burnout: "Work was shitty and precarious before; now it’s more shitty and precarious. Parenting felt exhausting and impossible; now it’s more exhausting and impossible. Same for the feeling that work never ends, that the news cycle suffocates our inner lives, and that we’re too tired to access anything resembling true leisure or rest. But it doesn’t have to be this way...Maybe all we need to act on that feeling is an irrefutable pivot point: an opportunity not just for reflection, but to build a different design, a different way of life, from the rubble and clarity brought forth by this pandemic. I’m not talking about utopia, per se. I’m talking about a different way of thinking about work, and personal value, and profit incentives — and the radical idea that each of us matter, and are actually essential and worthy of care and protection from precarity. Not because of our capacity to work, but simply because we are. If you think that’s too radical of an idea, I don’t know how to make you care about other people."
Three things I read this weekend that made me feel hopeful:
How to show ‘lovingkindness’ despite social distancing (it reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from the West Wing): But ancient religions offer more than just familiar rituals. They also contain wisdom about being human that has been crowdsourced across the centuries, helping billions of people cope with adversity. There is a Jewish concept that feels particularly relevant in the covid-19 era: “hesed,” which means “lovingkindness.”Hesed isn’t just an emotion; it’s a kind of action we take to help those who are struggling with illness, grief or emotional distress.
The best thing we can offer at such moments is not words or gifts but a “ministry of presence,” as chaplains call it — the simple act of just showing up, being there for others exactly as they are, and lovingly responding to their needs as best we can. We all sometimes find ourselves confined in a prison of our own anxiety, pain or despair. And no one can ever fully be in there with us, understanding the exact way our chest has tightened or how our brain feels as if it has collapsed in on itself. But if we’re lucky, someone shows up and points the way out, and we realize the path has been there all along, we were just too panicked or confused to see it. Or they help us see that the prison isn’t real, but of our own making, and we no longer need to keep locking ourselves away. And even if the other person cannot set us free, sometimes just having someone else there, fiddling with the lock or holding our hand through the bars, is enough
Your Only Goal Is to Arrive: Last week, as I read an article encouraging people to use the coronavirus quarantine to achieve something “extraordinary” with their lives, Jen’s advice ("When you travel with babies, your only goal is to arrive") came screaming back to mind. Today’s flight, dear friends, is very much delayed: not by hours, but months. Travel conditions are—to put it mildly—suboptimal. Each of us should have in mind only one goal: to arrive on the other side in one piece.
Because our reality has changed, we also need to change the metrics by which we judge our success. If Satisfaction=Experience–Expectations, and much of the experience is out of our control, now is the time to make sure our expectations are realistic and achievable. Expect delays. Expect crying babies. Expect to sit on the tarmac of human biology for most of the summer, staring out the window at a cloudless sky, thinking, “Why the hell aren’t we taking off?”
Teens start free no-contact delivery service for the elderly during the pandemic: It started with two Maryland teenagers volunteering to help get groceries for elderly neighbors. Now their free delivery service, called "Teens Helping Seniors," is rapidly scaling up to match an increasing number of requests with their growing network of teenage volunteers. "There is a negative portrayal of teens and I think our organization is reversing that stereotype, and people are seeing that teens can really benefit the community," Pai told CNN. "I think there is still altruism in this generation, and we can spread that. Spreading kindness is a good message." The teens' calls often go beyond just groceries."A lot of these seniors need someone to talk to and the opportunity to connect for a bit," explained Pai. "It inspires me that we might be able to bridge the generational gap."
Covid-19 Poem of the Day:
The Rhythm
In any creative feat
(by which I mean your work, your art, your life)
there will be downtimes.
Or so it seems.
Just as the earth is busy before the harvest
and a baby grows before its birth,
there is no silence in you.
There is no time of nothingness.
What if,
during the quiet times, when the idea flow is hushed and hard to find
you trusted (and yes I mean trusted)
that the well was filling, the waters moving?
What if you trusted
that for the rest of eternity,
without prodding, without self-discipline,
without getting over being yourself,
you would be gifted every ounce of productivity you need?
What would leave you? What would open?
And what if during the quiet times you ate great meals
and leaned back to smile at the stars,
and saw them there, as they always are,
nourishing you?
There are seasons and harvest is only a fraction of one of them.
We forget this.
There is the rhythm that made everything.
The next time you stand in the kitchen, leaning,
the next time a moment of silence catches you there,
hear it, that rhythm, and let it place a stone in your spine.
Let it bring you some place beautiful.
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