Back in the day I used to go to see funny movies in theaters.
I say back in the day because we can’t go to theaters right now due to the mandatory quarantine happening in places all over where heartbeats exist and life flows. We are not alone in this. It is happening everywhere. That feels important to remember.
I also say back in the day because I have been living a life of isolation due to illness for several years now so I have been unable to go to a movie theater in a long while, even when they were open.
I used to love going to movie theaters, though. I loved watching really funny comedies in a room full of other people laughing. It magnified joy in a lovely way and I would feel connected, alive, happy. How amazing is it that we can be that impacted by each other? It’s lovely when it’s good.
How awful is it that we can be that impacted by each other? It’s hard when it’s bad.
The impact is immense. Your life and my life are so intertwined. My very survival rests in my ability to watch you live, see what I see and respond accordingly. My world and your world are so impacted by each other that the reality of separateness gets called into question all the time. We are far more connected and far more similar than we are comfortable admitting. I have choice and you have choice, but we really do make choices based on the smallest things we have no idea or awareness influence it.
You choose a lot because of me. I choose a lot because of you. That impact changes and fluctuates, but it always exists. We are connected.
The COV19 Pandemic has been a baffling and scary situation to watch as I sit from my long-isolated perch.
It is a world-wide flash mob called “The Dance of Our Primal Fears” brought to you by: “Toilet paper: Need it. Buy It. Wait. That’s too much. You don’t need that much… Hold on…Stop buying it! It’s not the stomach flu!”
It’s a new tag line that is being workshopped by the toilet paper industry. They’re working on it. Needs some polishing. They didn’t see this coming either.
The fear is bringing out the neuroses to the nth degree in all of us. The neuroses we have been polishing and working on for a long time, but we were gonna wait to unleash them upon the world, maybe after the election. They have been a-building for some time now.
Under this new pressure, we are rolling those neuroses out early. Here they come on out like a mighty powerful parade as we buy all of the toilet paper in all of the stores in all of the lands.
We are buying the toilet paper for a reason. And it’s a pretty important reason. We aren’t thinking. We stopped. Of course we did.
Our thinking is distorted anytime we feel fear and anxiety because of the neurochemical response that is just there to keep us safe. That reality is coupled with the long-time building of intense pressure that increased exponentially in 2016. It’s been intense for a while. We couple the fear with the intensity and we react. We see it on display as we take far more than we need and are indifferent to the scarcity we create for others for our own momentary, unsettled, and fleeting sense of relief.
We are having fear. We are having impulses. We are making choices.
I think about the first person that bought more toilet paper. I think about the next person in line who was like, “Why is he buying so much toilet paper? Should I buy more toilet paper?” Then she went and bought more toilet paper. Then the next person walking in the store as she walked out wondered “Why are people buying more toilet paper? There must be a reason.” They bought some more just in case.
That is why we bought all the toilet paper. We do that. We are ridiculous.
We just want to be safe. We are all looking around, assessing, acting and then hoping we got it right.
We are all choosing actions from the same place of fear and some of those actions will hurt us and some will help us and that is completely up to us to determine bit by bit and moment by moment and act by act as we navigate this in isolation-togetherness.
This paradox has to hold the meaning of life. It just has to be in there somewhere.
We have a worldwide shared thought distortion that is damaging on so many levels and in so many ways. It’s a filter that comes from that desperate part of us that just wants to believe that controlling life is possible.
I can control the moment I die if I just stay vigilant. This thought, though, is an absolute and absolutes are flags for thought distortions. It is also a thinking error. We cannot control death.
When we operate in thought distortions, fear is present a lot of the time. We also are about to do some damage if the distortion is the guiding part of our behavior. This distortion takes me from the reality that so many things are needed for my survival and makes me focus on one small thing, what’s in front of me. What I end up losing when I do this is, well…mainly – you.
If I operate in this distortion fully I begin to think that I matter more and you matter less. I then become threatened if you act on something I don’t understand. I then begin to worry that you will get to survive a bit more and I will get to survive a bit less. That changes me and my behavior. It leads to me clinging and clawing and climbing this small part of the world that I can cling and claw and climb because at least I am still moving and at least I am still fighting.
Then I will act selfishly. Then I will act harshly. And then it will be easy for me to become brutal.
It is what happens again and again and again and again when we are afraid on such a massive scale. If you mix our fragility with global panic then people overreact. Of course they do. Of course.
My friends, life is an endless grocery store trip for toilet paper in which people are stopping their carts in our way.
We are huffing and side-eying our communication of anger until it becomes socially feasible and acceptable to yell our frustrations or escalate in a worse way.
We then adjust our path as we lock eyes on the toilet paper we came for.
We then block someone else’s path two seconds later as we get what we came for, not caring for a single moment that they are feeling what we felt two seconds before.
This is us. This is us figuring out how to live while everyone else is figuring out how to live. We have done this before. It’s always what we are doing. It just is bigger right now.
Take a breath, my Dear One. Take a breath. Take another. My friend, take another. And if you didn’t do that. Go back and do it.
Slow. Down. Breathe. That’s fear. It lifts.
Breathe. Breathe. Remember.We have other options.
One of my favorite things written down on paper for my eyes to peruse (as often as I wish) is a line from a poem by ee cummings called “i love you”. The line I love is about the forgetting and the remembering that we keep on doing.
Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down
on it
I love this because it is the crux of living to me. We are always forgetting and we are always remembering.
We hold something that gives us an understanding of our aliveness and why it’s important.
We hold it for awhile. Then we put it away.
We live.
We exist.
Time passes.
We forget its presence.
We panic that we lost it.
We remember we didn’t.
We retrieve it.
Then we hold it again.
Let’s hold it again. Together.
We are scared and we’ve been acting like it.
We have other options.
We make other choices.
All we have is this moment and in this moment we can choose to do this together.
We are never really apart.
I need you and you need me even when we are healthiest apart. I still need you. You still need me. It just is.
We will survive better together and we forget that.
Now we can remember. We can choose differently.
Of course we can.
Of course.