The outlying calm of most people is a happy occurrence but there are some shudders in the air too. Long lines at a local gun shop, a nasty argument I witnessed at a nearby grocery store over a bottle of wine and a driver’s license, the scapegoating of Chinese people as the ones to blame for this crisis (if this goes very badly, calling it the Chinese Virus has the potential to make it open season on every Asian person). One of my friends, a man of many, many firearms, looks at those lines and sees lots of first time gun owners setting themselves up for accidents and a tendency to fearful shooting.
All kinds of long term predictions are flying around in news outlets as each of us tries to fill uncertainty with something solid. Our routines are on hold. The news grows more ominous. Many of us are locked away and spending way too much time looking at screens. We’re not twitchy yet, but the longer the shutdown goes on the more skittish we will become.
Many Governors are providing good leadership and truthful information and guidelines — from what I can tell, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Washington and California come to mind in this regard. The Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, Dr. Anthony Fauci has consistently told the truth. Accurate information is easily available. One just has to pointedly ignore some sources and use one’s built in lie detectors to ferret out the nonsense of idealogues and fools.
What helps for me, and I think this applies across the board, is to very deliberately stop thinking of one’s self for a while and reach out to friends and family to ask whether they are well, whether they require a drive by talk, a carefully sanitized care package, a lifeline if circumstances warrant it. I mean lifeline in the exact sense of that word — a line we will throw them if their lives are imperiled. Strangers too. Maybe especially strangers.
But I do have enough of a faith in human decency — when an outside force assaults a people. That’s why I think we’ll be ok and that we’ll look out for even strangers — as long as the numbers are not overwhelming, as long as there is order and an authority of law most believe is competent and honest. I am not naive. Those “as long as’s” are critical.
Camus got it right, I think, in The Plague when he writes, “All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.” Not to join forces with hatred and fear especially. Fear destroys thought and hatred poisons everything that affirms life.
Ohh, and for antidotes to poison there is walking. If you are able, walk out in the air. If you are truly housebound, open a window, breathe unfiltered air. The birds are beginning to flood the skies. Call a friend. Write a letter. Look out for those who need a hand. Our souls are at stake in this as well as our bodies.
