Even as public health directives to curb COVID-19 ramp up, it is important to know that this situation will put us through both a personal and a collective journey before it passes. Before the waiting is done, time will pass excruciatingly for many of us like a kind of enforced metabolism or incarceration. The change of pace will ruthlessly expose us—to ourselves.
Phase 1: Realize this crisis real, go buy stuff! Within 5-7 days in Pitkin, Eagle and Summit Counties this situation went from distant news to intimately present for most citizens. During the rush on retail shelves that emerged suddenly last week, our survival, reptile, monkey minds were on full display as many scrambled to fill pantries and freezers for the long haul. Shelves were emptied revealing our greatest fear is running out of toilet paper, second only to water and bleached based cleaning products. Later it was food. We may become cooks again. My son returning from CSU stopped to pick up fishing supplies in Northern Colorado and noticed another phenomenon—people clearing shelves of ammunition and back-ordering weapons. Ominously, since they were not clearing the shelves of fishing gear to survive, it can only be guessed they were back ordering guns to protect themselves from other people. Scary. Let it not come to that. I don’t think that happened during the Great Depression. Clearly many Americans are anxious during the front edge of this crisis, they are busy hoarding and preparing. In this phase, there is much to do. Last week we spent 4x what we normally do on groceries—more like preparing for a two week trip to Lake Powell with increasing urgency each day.
Phase 2: Hunker Down. Figure out how to work from home if you can (or go home if you can). Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is emerging as the sanest voice of this event at the Federal level suggested that Americans “hunker down.” They will be doing so without live sports or social gatherings. This could have been a perfect March Madness excuse! Governor Polis suggested we “only go out for necessities.” Right now, there is no telling how long social distancing and the restrictions or closures being announced will last. It will be weeks. It could be months. The impacts could be enormous–so be cool. Try to be cool, please. We are about to have a massive social experiment on whether Americans can just chill out for a while without the activities and social tools that enable our nearly constant restlessness.
Phase 3: Romanticize it. Catch up on sleep. Do some chores. Read a book. Binge watch that series. Get in shape or get really fat. Call Grandma. Some in the high country or rural areas who have been here for a while see this activity of stocking up and then wintering-in for a season of prolonged isolation as a familiar rhythm in keeping with the spirit of why we chose this place. How we live, work and travel today would have been strange just a couple of generations ago. Intensively be in the now. Or pretend you are in another time. You will know we have slipped back into a different time if CPW opens up a Spring hunting season to relieve hunger. We are not at one with the earth—see if you can re-channel that connection for the sake of all of us.
Phase 4: Restlessness. This will get interesting. The behaviors being suggested do not play to most of our strengths. Certainly not mine. In spite of living in the land of plenty, Americans are renowned for over-valuing being busy and working longer hours than many peers around the globe. It keeps us amped up and keeps us from reflecting. Many of us define who we are by what we do. We measure and compete on how we do it. Guilty. Even our time-off tends to be over-programmed with semi-frantic transitions from activity to activity. How we absorb media is often described as a “binge.” We are challenged to just “be.” The degree to which we learn to chill out during this time will be a gift to the many whose lives could literally be saved by our collective isolation and studious inactivity. That is a very foreign notion.
Phase 5: Try old fashioned relating by telling stories (longer than a tweet). If you prefer knitting or have other crafts to lean upon, then do so. It is a great time for puttering in the shop. If you lack the tools to begin carving stone or wood, or start making stained glass, mosaic windows, storytelling and taking the time to listen are low budget crafts that are becoming lost arts. Art can provide a shared context. Maybe tell your own story now because you have the time. It is also a form of self-therapy. Here is my go at that:
I remember taking our son and daughter to visit the Denver Aquarium when they were just past diaper-young. It was the cornerstone activity of a Saturday to motivate the kids. We drove down from Eagle to be there soon after the doors opened. After passing through the entrance and grand foyer, we emerged into a dark tunnel with fish tanks built into the wall. The kids rushed from tank to tank to see what creature each contained. Some creatures were dynamic and induced curiosity, making them linger, many other creatures were not readily evident. At one larger tank, we all paused there because it was larger with a lot of fish. We lingered also because a father was crouching at eye-level with his son, intently watching one fish in a tank. They were of a different skin color than ours which was novel to my children. It took a while to discern which creature inside demanded so much of their attention. The father and son were silent for some time. They were so patiently intent that it captured my kids’ attention. Their focus was mildly discomforting. I had a thought which I kept to myself — that this tank was clearly a context exhibit and not a feature exhibit. After a while,I realized we all had to be watching a fish that wasn’t moving much. Then the father said to his son, “see that fish, that one back there? He’s just chilling out.” It was spoken with a cadence of reverence. My kids were already moving on by then. Most of the aquarium was yet to be visited. There was megafauna to see, and a planned sequence to the day after rushing through the exhibits: lunch, bathrooms, gift shop, a photo, a few strategic shopping visits to fill the back of the mini-van before we blasted back up into the mountains with children asleep in the back. We were not chill, but damn did we nail that day.
This past week has been a cascade of Public Health Orders in the high country, which have been proactive, wise and appropriate to meet the emerging situation by reducing social contact and opportunities for the virus to spread in order to flatten the transmission curve. We will adjust through these phases; and then, as we practice our social distancing with cupboards and arsenals stocked, workplaces, schools, and public gathering places temporarily closed, major sports on TV canceled, many of us will figure out how to do what we do at a different pace while there are less external stimuli directing us what to do. Will our internal clocks reset?
It is likely that COVID-19 will be the largest shared cultural experience of the past 50 years. In many measures of modern living, mostly being active and making enough money, whether we see it or not, most of us have not been keeping up economically, or socially, or to the expectations we set for everything. Many people will actually fall behind before our eyes during this time. We are in denial about this, and we have not yet collectively been able to see the suffering as a shared experience. I will avoid the litany of examples of national policy that reflect this disconnection. They are many.
If we can tolerate ourselves for the next few months, we may emerge better equipped to be more compassionate. There will be many we know who suffer greatly during this time, without a paycheck, having to close a business, having to go without. Much of this will occur beyond the reach of our direct action. Perhaps we will see ourselves in all that and be a little less quick to shame others who are not able to keep pace. Perhaps our policies will take a cue from that change.
There will be front-line people who will be heroic for us, but for most, our greatest service will be our patience. The most significant test of which will be with ourselves. How we each react to the phases of this emerging event, specifically as we hunker down and stop racing each other, racing ourselves– I have to wonder how it will affect us.
It will not unfamiliar to the same Public Health officials who were intently focused in recent years on a more slowly emerging public mental health and substance abuse crisis, now focused on a more acute risk that we move through these phases as time passes, slowing down for many isolated people. The most pressing question will be, “how do I deal with me?”
