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Outbreaks, Part 2

A couple weeks ago I wrote about the importance of relationships regarding the two significant outbreaks that Nashville had faced in the recent weeks. Today with our country and world seemingly at a standstill with social distancing and quarantining, worry and anxiety are spreading much like the virus itself.

I’m noticing that many are having an increase of anxiety due to a lack of boundaries around their news consumption. Existentially, anxiety is about limitations and powerlessness. We cannot control what has happened, or what will happen. When we flood our being with information that we cannot do anything about, we either become apathetic or anxious. Neither of these lead to good things for us or for those we love and care about.

Before the quarantine, what most of us used to have was a set schedule and boundaries around work life and home life. With that gone, we have become unmoored from what governed our lives. We’ve lost the comforts that we relied on to keep us safe. This week, David Brooks wrote an Op-Ed piece in The NY Times about the virus’ impact on our society and that it’s a test for all of us. How will we respond?

As humans, we don’t exist (to our knowledge) outside of linear time. We’re bound to the gravity that holds us all stable on the ground. The same is true with time. We don’t know how long this will last. We don’t know what life will look like once it does pass (if it indeed does pass). We don’t exist in an alternate timeline, and thus we are left to face the truths that are in the present before us. What this virus is doing to us as individuals, and as a society, is revelatory about us, not about the virus.

Are you becoming apathetic, anxious, or something else? Be curious, what does your response say about you and what you might need to address about your limitedness?

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With Ourselves

The majority of us are having to grapple with our ourselves in a completely different way due to the virus outbreak. Our limitations are on full display as we all try to navigate these new realities of life without activities outside the home. A good friend of mine said it really well about the quarantine most of us are experiencing, “this is a front on battle with idols.”  

We don’t have live sports to distract us.
We are no longer able to vicariously live through our kids sports.
We’ve lost the water cooler conversations at work that use others’ stories to make us feel better about our own.
The shelves in the meat department are bare.
The bars are closed.
Some of us are alone in our houses, unable to share a meal with others.
Some have lost their jobs.
Others have lost lives.
There is only so much Netflix, YouTube, and social media we can consume to distract the reality that we are incredibly limited and fragile people.

While much of the above is waiting for our return back to normal after the virus has passed. The question for all of us today is: What will we do with ourselves in this passing of time? Blaise Pascal said it well: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Will you press into what comes up for you when you sit quietly in a room?

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