The Facts of Life

by Pádraig Ó Tuama 

 

That you were born
and you will die.

 

That you will sometimes love enough
and sometimes not.

 

That you will lie
if only to yourself.

 

That you will get tired.

 

That you will learn most from the situations
you did not choose.

 

That there will be some things that move you
more than you can say.

 

That you will live
that you must be loved.

 

That you will avoid questions most urgently in need of
your attention.

 

That you began as the fusion of a sperm and an egg
of two people who once were strangers
and may well still be.

 

That life isn’t fair.
That life is sometimes good
and sometimes better than good.

 

That life is often not so good.

 

That life is real
and if you can survive it, well,
survive it well
with love
and art
and meaning given
where meaning’s scarce.

 

That you will learn to live with regret.
That you will learn to live with respect.

 

That the structures that constrict you
may not be permanently constraining.

 

That you will probably be okay.

 

That you must accept change
before you die
but you will die anyway.

 

So you might as well live
and you might as well love.
You might as well love.
You might as well love.

No one has totally digested what has taken place in the last month, and we are certainly making up the future as we go. Such uncertainty eats energy, which is why many of us feel an unexplained exhaustion.

The best way to combat uncertainty is to create a simple routine. Routines bring a sense of security, because we know what comes next.

That said being quarantined is not something to be mastered. Do what you must and what keeps you sane, short of using alcohol or drugs to stay there. In other words, don’t try to be a “star” at this; “good enough” is fine.

In any case, we are not going to crawl out of this quarantine and skip through summer. It is going to be a nip and tuck process, probably interrupted by new outbreaks. There won’t be anything near “normal” until there is a vaccine. Even then you likely won’t be picking up where you left off before the “house arrest” was ordered.

Adjusting to an on-again off-again post-quarantine schedule will be difficult, which means stress. And stress impacts personal relationships, which means more stress.

When stressed we can either implement an action or focus on self-care. The choice should be easy. How can you effectively implement actions if you are a mess?  You got it. Take care of yourself!

We’ve all been listening and reading about how to best handle the quarantine so there is little reason for me to duplicate the advice you’ve already read. What you must do depends upon your circumstance. Your days could be busy with kids. Or you could be living with a partner or living alone. Working, out of work or retired. In any case, I suspect you are striving to create order. 

A lot of people are experiencing an underlying sadness. This is normal. We have lost the life we were living a mere few weeks ago. Some people are way past sad and are feeling desperate. If you know a person who is, help them. Provide them resources. We are in this together – epidemiologically entwined.

It seems strange to see the names of “kids” I went to high school with – in my email inbox. But that has been happening since the corona virus outbreak.

I have not attended any of my high school reunions because it is not a simple direct flight to the small town in Ohio. As I type my reason, I sound more practical than sentimental, don’t I? (I will have to think about that.) Or maybe I never returned because thinking about high school brings up painful teenage memories of sitting at home watching “Gunsmoke” painting my nails while everyone else was out on Country Road E necking.

It has been a LONG time since I was in high school.

Regardless, these people are in my inbox. And while I struggle to put a face to their names, I do get an instant felt sense of the person when I see a name.

The feeling of Larry K, for example, is a feeling of devilishness. The name makes me smile.

And what is Larry sending his high school classmates now?

Humor.

That Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief

Scott Berinato interviews David Kessler, academic, author and grief-expert. David is an LAPD Specialist Reservist for traumatic events and has also served on the Red Cross’s disaster services team.

EXCERPT from Harvard Business Review article:

HBR: People are feeling any number of things right now. Is it right to call some of what they’re feeling grief?

Kessler: Yes, and we’re feeling a number of different griefs. We feel the world has changed, and it has. We know this is temporary, but it doesn’t feel that way, and we realize things will be different. Just as going to the airport is forever different from how it was before 9/11, things will change and this is the point at which they changed. The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air.

HRB: You said we’re feeling more than one kind of grief?

Kessler: Yes, we’re also feeling anticipatory grief. Anticipatory grief is that feeling we get about what the future holds when we’re uncertain. Usually it centers on death. We feel it when someone gets a dire diagnosis or when we have the normal thought that we’ll lose a parent someday. Anticipatory grief is also more broadly imagined futures. There is a storm coming. There’s something bad out there. With a virus, this kind of grief is so confusing for people. Our primitive mind knows something bad is happening, but you can’t see it. This breaks our sense of safety. We’re feeling that loss of safety. I don’t think we’ve collectively lost our sense of general safety like this. Individually or as smaller groups, people have felt this. But all together, this is new. We are grieving on a micro and a macro level.

The School of Life summarized their credo recently, but instead of posting the 6-page article, I have summarized what I think are the bare-bones, and I plan to post it on one of my kitchen cabinet doors!

Calm also has a coefficient