Reflection

When I look into the mirror now I am occasionally startled by the face which looks back. It is a slightly thinner, shorter haired and less pained looking reflection of the self which entered the time of COVID -19 and given the attendant weirdness of this event and the time since and ongoing, I am surprised by it.

Surely I am not relishing a pandemic ? The thought comes unbidden but just as swiftly, I know that this is not so. I am not relishing the pandemic. The suffering and loss caused by this virus in the affluent western world is inescapable, back-grounded by the losses and difficulties of managing it in the hugely populous nations such as the Americas, India and Indonesia and the compounded disasters of African nations whose multiple plights receive so little attention on Australian media at any time. Apart from a morning catch up on the state of my State and country, I have stopped trying to take in the big picture. I find it overwhelming and desperately, desperately sad.

Survival Strategy 1: Stop Trying to grasp the Big Picture. Go for moments.

My valency for sadness has been growing as I age. It has not felt in any way pathological or in need of therapy but more a natural element of the ageing process. For me there is something about growing in my capacity to hold many complex feelings and thoughts as I age which is exciting and humbling. Perhaps I have just stopped labelling any of them good or bad and the meditative practices that I have employed at times in my life are kicking in and enabling a degree of detachment. Whatever it is, I am enjoying it and it provokes me to become alarmingly irritated ( limited detachment here ! ) with depictions of older people as ether doddering or gaily doddering or just gaily.

Pre pandemic I would cry often , sensitised to the smallest nuances of not only sadness, but kindness, care and other demonstrations of humanity with all their quiet heroism. Now I can reach peak tearful in even the ad breaks of the television I have been watching far too much . So for self preservation I am avoiding sad. As far as television is concerned however, I am finding just the right tone in reruns of the American Korean War series M.A.S.H which is wonderfully written and has a black humour I wish I could see reflected in our current circumstances.

Survival Strategy 2: Accept the sad and complex.

But maybe Pandemic Black Humour is politically incorrect. The discussions about who can speak and how they can speak and what they can speak have also been capturing my attention during this time. I feel enormously challenged about how I signal my thoughts and feelings about the world and apart from here where I can edit myself, I find myself curiously inarticulate about the social and cultural issues occupying this time. It is a feeling akin to that I experienced in professional psychology workshops where a surfeit of emotion engendered by an activity has rendered me unable to share my experience with a group. Perhaps the essence of my dilemma is that now is not the time to hear the voice of an old, heterosexual, privileged, white woman.....

And hopefully there is a reaction to hearing too much of the voice an old, heterosexual, privileged, white man who just happens to lead what was once the bastion of the Western world ....I have been reading a booklet called the Three Dimensions of Freedom by Billy Bragg who is a British musician and commentator which explores the current zeitgeist in terms of liberty, equality and accountability which gives me some clarity about this period. I have these strange sensations of my experiences in the 60`s when I was a young university student as I see the marches and battles to today. It gives me this strange expereince of my own timeline and the making of history.

Billy Bragg also lives in a house just across the fields from a village and each evening during the lock down, he preformed music at a sound level that would reach across the fields to its inhabitants. I have loved these examples of creative generosity during this time.

Survival Strategy 3: Bless creatives.( Particularly the wonderful cartoonist who always depicts Trump naked in a diaphanous gown. It, against all odds , makes him oddly fetching. )

There is also something oddly liberating about a lock down or restrictions to social gathering. I first felt it when I broke my leg many years ago and could not leave the house. It is a sort of absolution from responsibility and relinquishing of control. It plays to my strengths as an introvert and I have, I must admit, enjoyed this period of relatively uninterrupted introversion. In conversations with many others, I find that they too are reporting a sense of freedom from expectation and judgement. Real or imagined. It is telling that it has a taken a pandemic to remind us that expectation and judgement create tension and strain.

Survival Strategy 4: Remember to give yourself permission to just be.

Introvert or not I am missing sharing hospitality with friends. This is a self imposed restriction based on my paranoia level ( or as I would like to consider it ...a judicious calculation of the odds ) . Just as I have decided to relax and share my home and food and wine as is my want , COVID cases have increased in the city and imperilled my frail sense of security. The old cat is a demanding companion but her communication is a self interested and although I do share conversations and occasions with dear friends, these lack the comfort of being in an environment where it is possible to be unaware of possible contagion. ( such an apocalyptic description ) We are however all in this together, the world is in this together and it is important , when the frustration builds to realise this. Together we are negotiating new rules about how we be together.

Survival Strategy 5. Refuse to believe that you will never hug with abandon again. And think about everyone in the world believing that. I have no doubt the universe will get our intention. She may however ask us for some changes in return.