LESSONS FROM THE TITANIC

Hub and I talk daily about how we are feeling in this time of Stay Home/Stay Healthy (as our governor has named this "stay at home order" period) and how we are navigating this in our daily activities and emotional lives.  It grounds me to be able to voice my confusion, fear, gratitude, anger, love, concern...all of it.

Yesterday I told him I felt anxiety building again, after several days' hiatus.  Hub pointed out that the novelty of this situation has worn off 3-1/2 weeks into this.  At first it was freeing to let go of social obligations, activities, and tasks.  It was fun to hang out together, with no distractions, in easy, open-ended days, feeling the playfulness and contentment and support of this gift of unstructured time. 

But now, we are still here, still practicing physical distancing for who knows how long.  It's not ending yet.  We have not hit our peak of new cases and more deaths.  As more is learned about this virus, we are discovering asymptomatic carriers can pass it along, and possibly much easier than we imagined -- not just through touches, coughs, and sneezes but also through "aerosols" in the air from merely breathing.  The only way to slow or stop this is to stop interacting with other humans.  So we have to find a way to define our every day lives within this confinement for the long haul.

We notice that since discovering Zoom, our calendars are filling up again.  We are seeing friends and family frequently and even going to meetings.  And because the technology is easy and available with a keystroke, we are even increasing our time with various groups (monthly meet-ups have become twice monthly or even weekly) and while this may be a lovely thing to do, we are suddenly feeling "too busy" again.  We have rushed into familiar territory to fill the void.

And isn't that what we do when we feel off balance?  We seek to find balance with the familiar rhythms of our lives.  For us it's connecting, organizing, and taking action.

But in doing that, I feel I'm shortchanging the opportunity to build new skills, make new habits, exercise new muscles for living that can serve me better now and in the future.  Do I even want to go back to what was so familiar?  Or do I want to create a new way of being in my world?  Maybe by filling my time with these familiar distractions, I'm not diving deeply enough into the grief all of this has caused.  Maybe I'm not giving myself the chance to find meaning in this moment, to find the gifts surely there to discover.

I was watching author/motivational speaker Glennon Doyle's  daily video, "Family Meeting", on FB this morning where she compared this pandemic to the Titanic.  She highlighted many of the characters portrayed in the movie and how they all responded to the impending disaster differently.  She urged us to not look at this as "Is this ship going down?" in a state of panic, but rather, "Who am I on this ship?"  Am I the one shoving people out of the way to save myself (denying, hoarding, endangering others by going out) or am I in the orchestra on the deck, playing on, giving the gift I know how to give no matter what happens, perhaps easing the way for others?  We get to choose.  I think there is a lot to learn about ourselves right now if we are open to the lesson.

At least, that's the view from here...©