This morning was much like other mornings; I read my digital newspaper, emails, weather reports, and checked my work messages. I looked up the deaths from Covid-19 in Ventura County: 10 fatalities, 309 confirmed cases, 9 people currently in the ICU. There are so many statistics, models, curves, interpretations of data, opinions; and all of it layered with fear, anger, outrage, confusion and insecurity.
I find myself caught in a loop of uncertainty. As more information emerges, it seems more and more likely that vast numbers of us were infected and didn’t know it; were infected and thought it was a generic cold or flu; were infected and continued on our merry way, spreading the virus everywhere because we had no idea that we were sick. The true mortality rate of this virus is far lower than what we were told before, a fact that does little to comfort the families of those who died. But the real horror seems to be that something new killed our loved one–we’re prepared for accidents, cancers, heart attacks, regular flues, any number of other ways to die; but this caught us by surprise. Not that it should have–but that’s beyond the scope of what I want to say.
In the end, it seems, this will become yet another way for us to become sick and for some, to die. At the heart of this truth is fear–that awful, gnawing fear that you won’t survive something invisible and unpredictable, that colonizes you without you knowing it and affects you in such completely mysterious ways–maybe you will not even be aware of this virus, or maybe, just maybe, it will suffocate you. As such, it strikes to the very core of our biggest anxieties: it’s unknown, unpredictable, and uncontrollable.
My husband coughed today. Once. He said, “that’s what a dry cough sounds like”. Immediately, I thought of my parents. If my spouse is sick, then they might be. If my husband is sick, then I most assuredly am, too. Will he die? Is it already in his chest? I take a mental inventory of his past battles with bronchitis, and my past struggles with asthma, which has sent me to the ER when I had ‘just’ a cold. I think about the people we might have to notify, the fact that we haven’t updated our estate plan . . . I wonder what will happen to our daughter, and suddenly I am on the floor in a trembling heap of despair, believing that our life is over; that we’re murderers because I hugged my mother a few days ago, even though I was wearing a mask. Even though I washed and sanitized my hands until my skin peeled. I couldn’t help it. I hadn’t hugged her in over a month, and I couldn’t take it anymore. As it turned out, my husband never coughed again, and he has no fever or any other symptom of anything whatsoever. And yet. Asymptomatic people can kills others, as we’ve been told over and over again.
Nothing that we do is safe. Nothing. One trip to the grocery store, one hug, one unauthorized visit, one neighbor without a mask who comes up the driveway, one take out meal (with the attendant shame that I killed my family because I didn’t cook that night), one careless contact with some random surface that I didn’t know was infected, and *boom*, the lethal, little, coronavirus is in me and soon to be in everyone with whom I come into contact. Is this any way to live?
No. We can’t live this way forever, and everybody knows that. At some point, we have to make friends with this new enemy and allow risk to re-enter our calculations when we go out, go back to work, go shopping, and see loved ones. We can’t allow a galloping paranoia to overtake everything we do; we can’t shame every person who doesn’t follow the rule of the week, or we risk giving up all personal freedom in the name of increasing our odds of survival even by a tiny fraction of a percent. The legacy of Covid-19 can’t be an insidious fear that distances us from each other for months, years, forever; it can’t become the new cultural norm to avoid other people, to eye them with suspicion, to call them out for a sneeze or a cough. And yet, that’s what I see happening. Even after there is a vaccine or an effective treatment, the mental and emotional toll of this virus will exact a far greater price than the illnesses it originally caused. We run the risk of becoming mentally ill as a community, as a culture; a mental illness that will further separate and isolate us from each other, solving none of the problems that this virus brought to light.
We’ve had a long descent into our country’s worst sins: poverty, homelessness, racial and social injustices all revealed in the harsh light of day. This is still Lent around the world, for those who find meaning in Christianity. We are still in the tunnel, still wandering the desert, still deep in reflection and pain. It will end, at some point; and when it does, will we care more for those who died in the largest numbers? Will we find better ways to care for our senior citizens? Will we really have the courage to face the fact that racism and inequality have allowed Covid-19 to disproportionately ravage black communities? Will we finally do something about our ailing planet? I don’t know. The experiment continues.
Can an awareness of eternity and continuation of consciousness do anything to help us navigate this crisis? I think so; but it requires that we drop the separation–artificial to begin with–between spirituality and the material world. Spirituality is not about meditating, or engaging in spiritual ‘practices’; it’s really about how we manage the turmoil and the terrors of this world, right here, right now. There is one thing that we can do, whether or not we are in crisis: focus on what is real, what is actually happening, and what we can directly experience. Notice that focusing on the current moment eradicates the fear of what might, or could, happen. Notice that if you can stay intimately connected to right now, right here, you don’t fall into the abyss of possible outcomes.
Life itself is mysterious, uncontrollable, and unpredictable. That can either be cause for retracting into our agonized shells, or it can be cause for celebration; not knowing what comes next frees us from the responsibility of trying to peer into crystal balls in order to soothe ourselves. Take the measures to keep yourself and others safe in the HERE and NOW; take action in the present, the only real aspect of our lives. Do something to alleviate someone’s pain or fear, right now, not for what will result from your actions (you can’t know), but because your life is only happening now; it cannot happen in any other space or time.
The one, dry, cough could signify a million possible outcomes, from absolutely nothing to the deaths of one’s entire circle of family and friends; and as morbidly entertaining as these scenarios are for the overly stressed mind, nothing good comes from spinning out scenarios. Your next trip to the grocery store could result in a collision with multiple vehicles because you hit a pothole, your tire exploded, you lost control of the car, and mass death ensued. Your walk around the hills could result in a twisted ankle, a fatal fall, a snake bite, or a slightly sore foot. THIS IS NOT A FUN GAME. You do not have to play. You do not have to engage in the fearful fantasies that our media encourage us dive into. Stick to now, to reality; do what needs to be done based on the reliable information that you have. Don’t play around with narratives, with fiction, unless you like to write and create stories. But don’t sell those stories as fact that results in mental, emotional, and spiritual anguish for others.
Spirituality in its truest sense is realism. Look around, take stock of what is and not what could be, and take compassionate action. For there are many, many, monsters under the bed. Only fight the ones that grab your foot. The others will fade into the mists of oblivion from whence they came.
–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD
The Soul Bank: Stories, Research, Essays, (B)Logs 
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