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Fear is Finite, Hope is Infinite: Lessons from the Lockdown
Fears of passing on Covid-19 drove me into emotional isolation. Then the silent teaching of nature healed my fear.
When my husband and I left Philadelphia for a much-needed Utah vacation, the threat of Corona Virus still felt theoretical. By the day of our flight, we were used to washing our hands raw, and we cleaned around our seats with sanitizing wipes, but we still counted on life to chug along as before. Human beings do that. The alchemy of survival means treating things as as permanent that never can be. It keeps us happy-ish, but it cuts both ways. Moments of banal irritation can make life feel endless. Intense pain, emotional or physical, are experiences eternal Hell was invented to explain.
In less stressful times, I’m quite good at compartmentalizing. I admit this is truly weird, but I find it comforting to scroll through the news on my phone, its dire predictions appearing in palm-sized stories and images I can magically click off. It’s like all the bad news lives inside my phone, not out in the world or lurking at my front door.
Compartmentalizing helps me keep sane, but of course, reality is bigger than my attempts to forestall it. A couple days into our getaway, something inside me downshifted. Museums…
