Reaching Out to You During This Time

I am going to write in the first person here because I will not presume to speak of your personal experience of this pandemic. But maybe I’m talking about you, too. I hope that what I write is far more gloomy than how you’re actually feeling right now. Or perhaps anxiety comes in brief spurts but you’re okay most of the time. This will read like it’s about me but it might be about you or one of your loved ones.

It has never been more important than it is now to live in the present. The past is a distant world, a receding and unrecognizable memory, a life that becomes harder to visualize each day that we are kept separate and apart from one another and our usual occupations. The future is potentially fraught with danger. Just thinking about it raises my anxiety level. I am okay now – maybe; I think I am! With such a long incubation period for this virus, can I really know for sure? But what will my fate be tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow? If this really goes on for months or even several years – steadily? In waves? – should I just reconcile myself to the certain knowledge that I am going to die from this at some point?

There is jangling in my brain. Too many people are crowding into my private space, invading me through my computer. And yet there’s nobody in here at all and has not been for many weeks. I listen to music, I meditate, I read, I paint, I garden, I take long cautious walks, all in an effort to quiet my racing mind. But then I talk to a friend on the telephone or I listen to a bit of the news on the television or radio and the irresistible evil thoughts fill my head.

I hope this is not you, or at least not most of the time. It is certainly bleaker than my own actual experience has been. But there are snippets of this mindset that drift in and out of all of our lives. The lack of control over our immediate environments and the larger world, and the lack of reliable information about the upcoming course of events, conspire to undermine our confidence that we have the skills that are required to face anything and get through our days.

If you think about the future incessantly, all of the unknown outcomes, many of which are truly frightening, you can become alarmed or depressed, frenzied or unduly passive. Nobody is really taking care of me, and I don’t even know how to take care of myself. There are magic rituals that I engage in – wiping down all of my grocery bags and packages with Lysol, washing my hands before and after every single thing that I do – and maybe these will expiate the evil forces and keep me safe?

I offer to you the notion that you might strive to the extent possible to live in the present moment. While you’re remembering the golden past or peering anxiously into a completely unknown future, you can create a sense of isolation and helplessness. If you can live in the present moment – I woke up, I’m fine, it’s a pretty day, I will watch my favorite show and read a chapter in that new book that I love – the moment in which things are all okay – you can feel so much calmer. And if you can quiet the commotion in your head and just BE, you even have the opportunity to connect with God. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that God is at our sides and wrapping sheltering arms around us when we’re anxious. But if we can quiet the noise and be in the here and now, we just might hear that still small voice bringing us support and comfort and healing.

I would like to close with a beautiful poem by Karyn Kedar, called “Surrender.”

Surrender to the mystery of life

And in doing so

Open your heart to Divine wisdom.

Surrender to that simple place of knowing

Where in the softness and calm

God speaks to you.

Surrender to your desire

To believe in goodness and beauty and love

For in all these are Godly waves of truth.

To surrender is not to relinquish responsibility.

Tend to what is yours, release what is God’s

Learn to live with ambiguity.

There is a force stronger than your will and ego.

Have faith.

Surrender.