Coping
Not everyone is in the exact same situation. For some, life hasn’t changed dramatically…perhaps they were retired and didn’t need to run many errands, and essentially stayed at home before. For others, life took an incredibly abrupt left turn…I’m thinking of folks with school-age children, or who got laid off from their jobs, or who traveled frequently, or some combination of these and other things. And there’s the broad category we can’t forget, who are facing especially hard challenges…health care workers, deliverers, and all those in the grocery supply chain. So I acknowledge the spectrum of experiences we are going through. That said, in a very broad sense we are all going through the same thing, the many-sided impact of COVID-19.
What I’ve seen is there are as many ways of dealing with this sudden change as there are kinds of impacts from coronavirus. While everyone is unique in how they are coping, I tend to categorize things, right or wrong, so that’s what I’m going to do here.
I see there are some for whom this whole thing really hasn’t sunk in yet. A relative of mine was expressing worry about needing to make a minor change to his vehicle registration with the DMV. When I told him all the DMV offices statewide are closed due to coronavirus, and that they are only addressing the most serious of driving needs right now remotely (letting everything else slide for the time being), it was like I was speaking some unknown language to him. It puzzled me that he wasn’t comprehending this at all, because he’s a smart, mentally sharp guy, but then it dawned on me that this is probably a subconscious defense mechanism. One way to avoid shock and uncontrollable terror is to simply not allow yourself to fully understand what is going on.
Then there are others who take the opposite approach. Not only are they fully embracing the phenomenon that is COVID-19, they are obsessed by it, gobbling up each new headline or rumor like a fix of an addictive substance. No amount of new information is enough, never mind whether it’s credible or whether it has any sort of utility in my life. It’s like, “Maybe if I reach some golden benchmark of information, then I can use it to figure out how best to go forward.” I’m not proud to say I’ve been squarely in this camp, and probably not all the way out of it yet. The problem is, while good information is great to have, in all likelihood we are never going to know everything there is to know about this virus. And not all information is good information…lots of it is misleading, irrelevant, or just plain false, and it can be tough to sort out the good from the bad. Obsession is another way for the brain to “cope”.
A different kind of obsession is when folks talk about “the day this is all over”. As if magically people across the globe are going to wake up one day, one time zone at a time, and find everything to be exactly as it was in November 2019. To these folks the light at the end of the tunnel represents a very clear black-and-white delineation between COVID-19 and Not-COVID-19. To me this is a dangerous delusion. While it’s great (and indeed necessary) to hold out hope that things will get better, the getting better will be neither sudden nor complete. The first outbreak will run its course, but there will be future outbreaks, other viruses, and a global economy alive but sidelined with illness. Instead of busting straight out of a pitch black tunnel into a blindingly-sunny June afternoon, it will be more like a sunrise on an overcast day…first there will be hints of light, shapes making themselves known from out of the shapeless murk…then the first shapes will become brighter and clearer, and other shapes will slowly appear too, and even though it’s not broad daylight at least you can walk around without fear of smacking into a tree. Not perfect, but doable. If we don’t manage our expectations now, we run the risk of being manipulated by those who promise to deliver our castles in the sky to us.
The last category I’m going to talk about here are the folks I’m going to call the downplayers and deniers. They understand what’s going on in the world, but they just aren’t getting why it’s important to stay home and save lives. Apparently they and their loved ones are not personally affected by COVID-19 and they cannot feel empathy for those who are. To them, 58,000 dead Americans (at time of writing) is just a number, and probably a made-up number so that the “lamestream media” can manipulate “real Americans”. Their way of thinking is entirely foreign to me, but I can only guess that they envision cruel, Machiavellian state governments that are itching to strangle their own economies (and thus indirectly strangle themselves) for no other reason than to show that they can. To them, it makes perfect sense that state governors would buy into whatever conspiracy is at the heart of the COVID-19 response. It makes even more sense to them that governors would jump at the chance to cripple their own economies. I can’t say why it makes sense to them, but it does, and these folks don’t like it. To them, if everyone would just wake up and take off their masks and go back to work, toting their guns if necessary (!), they’d soon discover this was all just a Lib hoax and everything would be good and clean and wholesome again. Or something like that.
I’ll admit I don’t have the answers on what the absolute truth is, or how to best cope with all of this, or the best sourdough bread recipe. I do feel that exercising patience, gratitude, learning, compassion, and our bodies is a good way to go even if not perfect. When I say “exercising” I mean pushing ourselves out of our own comfort zones a little bit, doing just a little more than the day before. I’m not perfect now and I’ll never be perfect, but that doesn’t mean I’m worthless now…it also doesn’t mean I shouldn’t grow.
Bike Newbie 