Coronavirus: Getting with the program and other things I don't like to do

In my blog post "Getting through this moment," I wrote about five tasks that Lourdes Rodriguez, Nupur Chaudhury and I had identified as tasks of collective recovery in this moment.  These are the five:  

• Turn on the Love
• Pay attention to this week’s needs
• Fight injustice 
• Extend and strengthen your network
• Build a personal foundation of spirit

The University of Orange Digital Campus has been examining these tasks, one at a time, and directing people's attention to what each involves.  I want to talk in this post about this week's needs.  

NY Week Seven has  brought to our attention care for our bodies which are suffering in a variety of ways.  Being cooped up in a small space -- with limited interactions with other people and many of those via the digital world -- is wearing on us.  Our bodies are strained.  

Therefore, notes from providers, newspaper articles and newsletters have been full of advice.  I've seen: Get some tech for your "home office,"; Do self-massage at night so you can sleep is another; If you're elderly, walk up and down the hallways while talking on the phone and swing cans of food; and, of course, wear a mask and observe physical distancing when outside.  

We might or might not be in a financial or social position to follow all of this excellent advice, but what worries me is not that we need self-massage, but that our spirits are low, and we are getting irritated with the restrictions the pandemic has triggered.  I was shocked, while driving around the nearby wealthy suburb, to see dozens of people out without masks, or with their masks dripping around their neck.  And I've heard many friends express impatience and irritation with the way we are living now.  Even more than our bodies it is our willingness to accept our dire situation that is being tested in this moment.  

What are we supposed to do about this?

Channeling my parents, who were members of the Greatest Generation and survived the Great Depression, World War II and the McCarthy Era, "Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and give unto God that which is God's," which loosely translated meant, "It is what it is."  

The corollary of that was that I was supposed to get with the program.  As a teen I preferred pouting to recognizing such limits.  But with age I've come to see their point.  I get it.  Not wearing a mask does not get me out of the situation.  Nor does getting angry because I don't like Zoom eight hours a day.  But how do I get from "pouty" to "serene"?  I think these are the three steps:  

First, I feel what I feel.  I don't think it helps people to tell them not to feel what they feel.  At least it never helped me.  

Second, I also have to see that it is what it is.  If my feelings are real, so is my reality.  

Third -- and this is the paradoxical part -- I need to thank the Universe for everything, including both my feelings and my reality.  My dear friend Pam Shaw sent me this quote by Chogyam Trungpa: 

Hold the sadness and pain of samsara in your heart and at the same time the power and vision of the Great Eastern Sun.  Then the warrior can make a proper cup of tea.

Just as I was writing this, a parade of cars, blaring their horns, came passing by.  It was Hazel Strong, a parade for the students and teachers of Hazel Avenue School which is near my house.  So this leads me to add a fourth step!

Fourth, Don't be afraid to cry when the parade passes by!  Even Governor Cuomo cries sometimes.