This morning I went for a walk and listened to the new Cheryl Strayed NYTimes podcast, Sugar Calling. Strayed called writer Pico Iyer in the April 15 episode titled “Joyful Participation in a World of Sorrows.” Iyer talks so beautifully about living with unexpected loss and coming to grips with impermanence in a conversation rooted in the uncertain circumstances we all find ourselves in today.
I felt inspired as I listened. I stopped to smile at the bluejays and robins that crossed the trail, grateful this bizarre world put me on a new routine that allowed me to better notice such things. I walked back through the neighborhood and enjoyed luscious roses in bloom. I couldn’t get over the intoxicating smell of the blossoms on a grapefruit tree, until I passed a giant lime tree.
I felt ready to take on the day with a better attitude. Remembering “if not now, when?” and “time is always a gift, never a burden,” along with the words from Strayed and Iyer, I was certain I could enthusiastically search for joy.
Yet, it’s day 43 of a shelter-in-place order. I haven’t shared a meal with anyone but my spouse and child for about two months. My child hasn’t been able to play with another child in all that time. She waves at pictures of babies and children, which looks adorable, but feels completely heartbreaking, as she desires social connection like all of us.
Yesterday we got the (not too surprising) announcement that shelter-in-place would be extended until at least the end of May.
I’ve been marking the days on my calendar. May 31st will be Day 76.
Staying home is the right thing to do. The medical community does not have adequate equipment, and they are not yet empowered with therapeutic treatments known to truly help virus patients. There’s not yet evidence that infection gives immunity, and we don’t have contact tracing or reliable tests. Staying home is the right thing, and I know it, but it doesn’t make it easy to come to terms with.
I tried to return a defective box fan to a hardware store during my toddler’s nap. Returns are not permitted under the health and safety order. This makes sense, but it was just enough of a disappointment to crumble my fragile emotional state. The rest of the day felt like an avalanche of failures and disappointments, trying to get my child to eat her lunch, frustratingly battling the EDD website as I attempt to file my unemployment claim, finding the washer downstairs was already in use by another tenant.
How does one balance joyfully participating in a world of sorrows, and allowing oneself to feel their sorrows?
Mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn writes in Full Catastrophe Living of embracing and surrendering to the challenges of human crisis to experience greater well-being. I see the value in this, and have read and listened to countless testaments to its efficacy. But where do Fred Rogers’s lessons fit in this? When do we “name and feel our feelings” and know it’s okay to feel those things—without being bogged down by them? How do we draw and hold that line?
I’m not at all sure, so for now I’m going to keep taking a half Unisom before bed to turn off my mind. Playing The Essential Leonard Cohen as my pre-bedtime soundtrack. Searching for joy, making sense of a growing pile of sorrows, and seeking balance between the two will just have to wait until tomorrow.
