Not long ago my sister posted on Facebook some words from Indian author Arundhati Roy. I’m sharing them and reacting to them because they helped me focus the flood of feelings, images and thoughts about the current situation. And because I can’t get them out of my head: (click here for the full article in the Financial Times)
What is this thing that has happened to us? It’s a virus, yes. In and of itself it holds no moral brief. But it is definitely more than a virus. Some believe it’s God’s way of bringing us to our senses. Others that it’s a Chinese conspiracy to take over the world.
Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to fight for it.
I may have taken the idea of this gateway too far. Each night at dinner I say to my family, “So, tell me one thing you plan to take into the new world.” This is now met with eye rolls. Last night my son gave me a level stare and asked, “Can you please stop saying the new world?”
The thing is, I can’t. As I alternate between hope and despair, grieving for the world that is lost and rejoicing at what might be possible, mostly what I feel is an inner roil. I’ve got an emotional hairball caught in my throat.
A decades old malaise has become sharp and distinct. My discontent was maybe not biological but cultural. I felt sad because there was a lot to be sad about. At the same time, I’m seeing the super organism that is the human race as something other than a miserable greed monster. We are, in fact, a large, soft mammal. An infant. Complex. Frail. So very frail.
A week ago, life ahead looked to me like a trip we were all compelled to take together. And it felt like we needed to leave right now. The car was running in the driveway and somebody was honking the horn. A guide, unrecognizable but definitely a person, was following me around the house every minute of the day telling me, yes yes, there is room for you and the people you love, but you must pack light. No, no, no, there isn’t room for all that baggage.
So what to take? Whatever makes me the best version of myself. A sense of humor? Yes. My prose voice, myself on the page, that is, the writer in me? Yes, I think so. Gratitude‚ definitely. My deep love and appreciation of the absurd and ridiculous. Grief and loss? I’d rather not but they are part of the deal. Maybe can we leave behind shame, self disgust, crushing self doubt, all derision and judgment? Yes. Leave them in the fridge with the molding bread.
But this week, something different began. The guide, whoever he was, went away. No one is whispering in my ear, following me around the house. I can see that the car is still in the drive, but the engine is no longer running. The rush has gone out of the journey concept. I think what happened is that the Pandemic settled in. Now I can’t even recall what created the sense of urgency. Was it the curve we were all trying to flatten? We wanted to beat the peak of the disease, yet now it seems no one can say for sure that this event is behind us. Did we win the war? Who exactly was the foe?
As the adrenaline leaks away, the new reality begins to take shape. There actually is no rush. I am still packing—like it or not, we are still going on this journey. But maybe here in this fifth (sixth? I’ve lost count) week, we see that this is going to take some time. We can consider carefully what to take and what to leave.
Brene Brown, in her new podcast Unlocking Us, describes these weeks in April as that moment after the funeral or memorial service, after the burial and the reception are over. The food is put away, the last of the grievers has gone. What lies ahead is the process of learning what you never wanted to know: how to live without the one you loved.
And so, readers, friends, I ask you as we face this future together: what about you? What will you take into the new world?
Beautiful!!! THANKS CHRISTY.
Thanks for reading and commenting🙏
Painful,but true. Thank you
It’s all less difficult knowing you are out there reading this❤️
❤️😥
Happy to see you here. Send us a letter!
Dear Christy- You have captured my feelings so precisely! I have been thinking much along the same lines as you. My prayer is that the world (particularly our nation) will emerge from this clutching the essentials to our survival and to making the “New World” better than this one. Love, Faith, Hope. You are such a gifted young writer, and I am so proud to read your works! You are blessed with a powerful mind and a truly artistic voice as a writer. Best wishes to you and all your loved ones!
Well as you were my first favorite English teacher, when I was so ridiculously young, this means a great deal to me. I could not be more thrilled to have you here and know that you are a reader. Lots of gratitude to you as we take this journey together.
From a friend, but I don’t know who wrote it originally: “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future with a known God.”
I want to take into the new world an improved self-awareness. I want to keep holding myself accountable to the work of doing good for others and for me, while giving myself credit when I do. Writing about my failures and redemptive moments, calling family and videochatting with friends, wrestling over boredom and remote school with kids, breathing the indoor and outdoor air of alone time: these are gifts I want to take from quarantine. I want us to keep holding each other up after quarantine, because we will know better about how to hold up ourselves.
Improved self awareness. yeah.
This week I am really feeling the weight of this world we are living in. I have “settled” into working from home and lowering my expectations about what I accomplish in doing so. So many things we have all had to settle into. I am all for the greater good so I sit in the background and do as I am told. Social distance. Wash your hands. Get your stimulus money. But this week it all seems too heavy. Maybe it’s the holding pattern we are in?
I feel you on this. I hate social distance. And I generally feel like a misanthrope. But these days, I love my fellow man and I miss them. Today I took a woman’s cart back into the store for her and it felt like anarchy. Actually, everything about the grocery store feels like anarchy. So yes, too heavy. And how weird is it that what was unthinkable has become somewhat “normal” in about a month’s time?
“Emotional hairball.” Yes, that’s what I’ve been feeling this week and I couldn’t articulate it. Funny and too painfully true. A sob lodged deep, but dry eyes. The mourning for my children, almost-men busting out of their boy-skins, stuck home with us at the exact wrong moment in their striving for autonomy. Mourning for my parents — my stepfather mired in grief already, and my father, who no longer leaves his apartment, though thank goodness he’s happy enough (so far) to do tai chi in his living room, water the plants on his balcony. Mourning for the doctors and nurses and EMTs showing up to treat the sick, not fearless, not at all — full of fear and showing up anyway. And the sick, and the dying, and the homeless, and the hungry, and the abused, and, and, and… The experience is huge, it expands beyond the periphery of my brain. All I have are words, and how I wish they could save anyone.
I hope we take with us the community we are reaching toward from inside our small isolations. I hope we all give up our seats and hold doors open and pay for customers behind us in line and say hello on the street and tip generously and value kindness over success, honesty over bravado, humility over perfection, wisdom over provocation. I hope we nurture the clean air and beautiful birdsong and leafy trees. I hope we have meaningful conversations. (And how I wish I could corral my teenage boys into that right now!) I hope we evolve into the next, better versions of Homo sapiens. I hope our brains grow, but I hope our hearts grow more.
Thanks for your words, Christy.
I just love this entire comment. The sob caught in my throat. Thank you so much. And I’m with you on the children: ready to be adults, to get away from us, and yet here they are, jailed. I feel you and I feel heard and felt by you and I am grateful.
I love everything said here, especially this: “I hope our brains grow, but I hope our hearts grow more.”