After having Covid-19, here's how I'm thinking differently.
This was originally posted on Medium.com. You can read it here.
There’s no question that it’s not business as usual at our house these days. My husband began experiencing telltale symptoms the day after we left NYC in early March. About a week later, I was starting to get sick too.
By all accounts we were lucky and had mild cases of Coronavirus (we think). Getting a test has been difficult. All I know is that wine tasted disgusting (such a bummer) and my little was VERY antsy for us to play with her! Several weeks in bed (while simultaneously entertaining the 5 year old) were what we needed to recover. We are grateful to have our health return when so many others have not fared so well.
Now that the worst (we hope) has happened, we are starting our lockdown life all over again- this time in clean clothes and out of bed.
Whether or not you have had Coronavirus, life has shifted.
I personally have felt despondent, angry, frustrated, confused and also strangely calm and truly filled with love and gratitude at times. We are spending more time in nature, certainly a lot more time together as a family, and while I’m still trying to find a balance between home, childcare and work, we are getting there.
But the fact is that we are privileged. Privileged not to be in survival mode (at least physically), privileged not to worry about paying for food or whether our electricity will stay on and if we can pay our rent.
If anyone reading this is suffering from hunger, loss of home, the illness or death of a family member, or domestic violence please reach out to me. When we are in survival mode it can become impossible for the brain to operate at its usual capacity and even simple things like making a phone call or paying a bill become insurmountable obstacles. You are loved and there is support for you.
For those who are blessed with more stability, this is a time of reckoning.
No one in our world has gone through what we are experiencing right now- in such a technologically connected way. This collective pause comes at a pivotal time in our world’s life cycle and while I do not want to attempt to parse the greater meaning and potential of this kind of shared experience right now, I do want to point to the lesson I’ve taken from this world event so far:
Other people will always make different decisions from those we make for ourselves.
What is most important to our own personal journey is what we choose to believe about those people because of their decisions- especially when they are different from our own.
Here’s what I mean-
At the beginning of social distancing and shelter in place, mask wearers were ridiculed and by far the minority (even in NYC). Today you cannot enter a store without one.
Over a month ago a simple choice (wearing a mask or not) spawned all manner of judgments and memes from both sides of the argument (to wear or not to wear).
Now that dilemma is a moot point and we see few dissenters (excepting that young woman protesting masks with her poster that has gone viral).
The crux of this is not the issue at hand (mask wearing). The crux of this is mentally dividing people into opposing teams because of one decision and assigning meaning and emotion to that team. Then we fall into the trap of dualism- a separation between you and me. Between us and them.
And that, I think, is the opportunity of this time- to observe how interconnected we are. All countries, all people, the virus itself, the natural world, the patterns of weather, even technology- interconnected in ways we have not even studied yet.
That interconnectedness, that oneness, is the essence of nondualism and opens up a pathway for us to make different choices next time around. And to observe the choices of others not from a place of reactivity and judgment but from a place of empathy and love (even if we still disagree with them).
I recently asked my mom to remove me from family group texts because instead of funny memes and discussing the names of long deceased family pets (rabbits, goats, cats, many dogs, bunnies etc) the thread devolved into racist and misogynist commentary brought up by my family’s reactions to the state of the world right now.
It was painful to read their true opinions. It was enraging to see how different their choices were from mine- how divergent their conclusions based on apparently similar data.
I have long struggled with my relationship to them and my beliefs about them. It would be far easier to label them “other” and move on. While I don’t have to spend time with them or communicate with them, it’s been a fascinating experiment to observe such a microcosm of our nation’s fissure in my own family- the battle for the rights of self vs. the rights of the collective.
I don’t have any answers (lol yet), but I am required daily to exercise my restraint muscle, my oneness muscle, and remember that we are not separate. And then to live and breathe and feel and act from that place.
And that is so hard. Because it can temporarily feel better to make them wrong, assign blame and feel self-righteous. But that’s a weak solution that actually cuts me off from true understanding, acceptance, and love- for them and for myself.
So my prayer for us all during this is that we drop the either/or, the us/them and feel the connection. Even for a few seconds at a time here or there throughout the day.
Please take a moment to do whatever it is that makes the interconnectedness more alive for you in your body and soul.
And again, if you are in survival mode, please reach out.