Yes, we are all at sea right now. We are fighting the waves of change. When I stood in line my habit trained mind rebelled against the 6-foot rule. My body wanted to move up. Many times the clerk had to say, “Wait until you are called up.” I watched my mind. I am always curious. My habit mind reacted and I felt many things at once. I felt ashamed because I hadn’t complied with the new rule and then exactly like the child that runs my life I felt petulant and defensive. Things like,”Who are you to” and “Why are you embarrassing me” and many other responses like that of a spoiled 4 year old flashed through my mind.
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And then people became numb to the COVID threat. I haven’t experienced a loved one dying on a respirator alone in a hospital so it isn’t real for me. None of my neighbours has tested positive and had to isolate and they don’t wear masks so it must not be that bad.
I watched my mind insisting that if I had no first-hand experience with the reasons for the rules then the rules were stupid and I wanna. I wanna go out. I wanna be with people. I wanna ignore the rules and the fear and the scientific data.
I thought of the time when I was too old to be that stupid when I ate some pretty red berries on a bush outback. I ate them because I WANTED to. My mother had told me that not everything that looked like a berry was a berry and I must not put new things in my mouth.
Nobody I knew was poisoned by a beautiful red seed looking like a berry. I had never been poisoned. The danger held no personal resonance for me.
And the arguments were exactly the same as I see operative in the population right now.
I wanna eat the berries. You can’t tell me not to eat them because you are just trying to force me to follow your rules. The berries have been there for years and NOBODY (you know that person called NOBODY) has ever fallen ill.
And so I ate the berries. Swiftly within an hour, I was violently ill. It was too late to eject the poison from my stomach but I tried valiantly. I started to shake, ran a fever and finally just passed out. My mother woke me to give me more inducement to vomit yet again and forced liquid into my reluctant body.
It was a week before I could stand on my feet again.
I was 8 years old. I was old enough to know better. But the problem was I was old enough to THINK I knew better. The idea, “You aren’t the boss of me,” is not the idea of an adult.
And so we see stages of resistance around us. First is fear… if I protect myself and others that means I fear the pandemic so I choose to brazen it out.
The reason for that response is that we don’t know how to deal with fear when it arises. We push it down. We deny it. We brazenly attack it like a schoolyard bully and beat the crap out of it.
We fear to fear. We are so frightened that we are worried if we sit down with the truth of our mortality that it will make us weak.
It is the way a child thinks.
Making room for fear allows us to adapt to changes around us more easily, more fluidly and with more grace.
You must be called to the till. Now, nobody calls me to the till. You must stay back 6 feet. Now nobody stays 6 feet back. The streets are deserted, the stores shut. Now the cars run back and forth and the lines are waiting to get into the stores. The aisles are marked with directional arrows. Now the people push their carts against the demarkation of correct movement. The schools are closed. The schools are opened. The older children are sent home. The younger children are still sitting together in class.
We are conflicted as a population. We want the government to stop protecting and controlling us, we say. We don’t want anything mandated. And then a grandchild falls ill.
We see an entire family fall ill and some members die from a pumpkin carving event.” But it was our bubble,” we protest as if there is some magic in the very word.
And now we are angry at the government. Why didn’t they mandate stricter rules even though the phased-in rules have sent hundreds out into the streets without masks to spread their fury words along with the virus into the air to share.
I watch my own mind and am impressed with how immature I am. I want the rules to stay the same once I have finally learned the rules. I want the 6 feet to be enforced and the cowboys who just go any which way up a grocery aisle to stop renegading the environment.
The last step of this child-like reaction is to withdraw and trust no one.
It is like taking a driver’s test but every two weeks there is a new booklet of laws. I am confused. And it is largely a result of the culture I live within.
In places like Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand the culture has a long tradition of trusting and complying with rules.
But here, the right to do what I damned well please has to be unlearned every single time a new law is put in place. Every new behaviour shift is met with righteous indignation.
I remember my father being pissed off when he could no longer drive with an open bottle between his knees while we sat in the back of the car without seat belts and the layers of cigarette smoke flowed over my brother and I. The adults resisted every single step put in place to protect us.
It is my belief that masks will become part of our culture going forward. Pandemics are not done. We have done far too much damage to the earth, to the environment to have the “normal life” return.
A virus is a part of the ecosystem and it is reacting to the threat to all life on earth and becoming more aggressive according to Dr. Aylward an epidemiologist for WHO. Sixty per cent of all species have died in the last 20 years.
Things are changing and no matter how many people show up in the streets saying we are not at risk, viruses will not respond to public opinion.
And so my hope is that mindfulness practice will become more frequently embraced. I cannot stop fear by yelling at it, denying it, refusing to believe in it. First, I need to observe my thoughts.
Constantly, I ask myself, “What are you feeling right now?” And I ask, “What are you thinking right now?” Then I pause. I clear out everything. I stay still and I watch my 4-year-old self resisting, wanting to be special, demanding consistency and finally planting my feet on the earth saying, “But I wanna eat the pretty berries.”
There are things I don’t know and cannot know. And for those things I need to trust others to keep me safe.
