Hello there…
I keep thinking about all of you, and wishing you peace and health in this time of withdrawal, or what feels like withdrawal.
It’s funny, withdrawal is the word we use when we speak of addicts coming off the high and getting sober. Leaving behind the thing that made them euphoric, and at the same time miserable. All of us, perhaps, are now in withdrawal.
Never having been through it in any “real” physiological way I can only guess how long it will take us to release ourselves from the addictions that have come to define us and our lives. I keep wondering what would happen if now, on top of everything else, all the power went out. I think that would be too much for most of us to bear.
Occasionally, well, probably more than once a day, I wonder what the post pandemic world will look like, assuming there is one, and I ask myself, do I want to be a part of it? Will it be a paranoid world where no one touches each other and we fight for toilet paper and accuse our neighbors of breathing on us or coming too close?
Or will it be one where we come together as humans, as real communities? Or something else.
The other night I was watching a TV show drama and this character was saying how she didn’t feel suicidal but she thought about death a lot, and viewed thinking about death as an escape, saying it almost brought a feeling of relief. And she talked about wanting to lay down in the clouds and rest and love and just be herself. And then her friend said, "Isn’t it possible that you could learn to let yourself rest and sleep and love in this life instead of waiting for death to set you free?”
I rewound that moment several times as it was so resonant for me.
I am not in despair and not overly anxious about what is happening. I am feeling a bit tired, but I am also curious and so many other emotions. About what is happening now, what is next, how we may be changed by this experience.
I was out for an evening walk the other night and at 7 pm I heard people come out and cheer and bang pots and pans. That’s what people are doing here, every night at 7, to honor the medical professionals and others on the front lines. It’s a much bigger event downtown, and this was first time I’d heard it, and it immediately made me weep.
It’s so much bigger than me. I wrote that on my white board a few weeks ago. It’s so much bigger than me. What role might I play? What role might you play?
And what addiction are you releasing? What will you leave behind going forward?
Thank you for listening and being curious…
