Seven months of Covid-19 Quarantine have left us tired, emotionally worn and testy. As a society, I've observed online and in various communities, our primary and first response to everything is filtered through the idea of "this is the next trauma."
I noticed this when my kids' uniforms didn't arrive and I sent a note back asking about it. The company said they mailed it back in August and I felt defeated. I started to react, to get angry, to feel like the world didn't care and nothing would change. I would just be stuck and out the money, minus the uniforms for my trouble. It wasn't the case at all, but it was where my mind immediately ran.
Online, a woman asked in the neighborhood about a noise she heard, immediately assuming the worst. Her response to things reflected mine. We tend to hear loud noises and think guns, not firecracker. We hear sirens and we think violence, not help. We hear someone cough and we think Covid, not cold. The loose dog must bite. The stranger must be dangerous. The response someone gives, if not alligned with mine, must be opposed. We'd become strange and conditioned to react rather than reflect.
I'd even seen it in my writing.I'd become more hesitant to write, to tell stories, or to really examine things. Humor became harder, because I wasn't willing to take risks or make associations. The long cloistering of life made and makes us more insular by nature, and less disposed to expose ourselves in the virtual and actual world, as everything not controlled feels threatening.
How do we fight this tendency? How do we create a community, a society that is compassionate when we view everyone and everywhere as a potential threat? We can't if we only react to everything as dangerous. We can't if we deny the reality of what we're fighting. There is a danger.
To fight this reality of a pandemic and the secondary danger of isolationism on a personal and public level, we're going to have to be both and in all things. We're going to have to go out. We're also going to have to wear masks and exercise caution and practice strict hygiene. We're going to have to engage others. We're also going to have to be careful where and when we go out. to protect others and ourselves.
The world is hard right now.
Make it softer.
The world is confusing right now.It will involve taking risks. Speaking up when others shout you down, reflecting rather than responding. It means being Both And. We'll get through this together, by living a life of contradictions, where we keep ourselves at safe distances, but work via words and letters and phone calls and deeds, to stay more connected than ever.
We're going to need to cultivate joy and friendships and beauty in the everyday, deliberately. To that end, we're doing a touch of Halloween daily until we get to Halloween to help with the lifting of other spirits and our own. It's a form of hope and defiance all at once. It's both and.
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