Tag: Pandemic

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FRAGILE


(Cambridge Dictionary) adjective, US   /ˈfrædʒ.əl/ UK   /ˈfrædʒ.aɪl/

easily damaged, broken, or harmed: 

Be careful with that vase – it’s very fragile.
The assassination could do serious damage to the fragile peace agreement that was signed last month.
I felt rather fragile (= weak) for a few days after the operation.
UK humorous No breakfast for me, thanks – I’m feeling a little fragile (= ill, upset, or tired) after last night’s party.

There is a package on the front porch stamped FRAGILE. I feel like I need to have that stamped on my forehead and should behave as though everyone else has it on theirs.

I’ve broken many fragile things in my life, including expectations. In most cases I was careless, carrying too much or not watching what I was doing, crestfallen over the resulting broken item. Or I was insensitive, had a hair trigger reaction, not thinking through how my words/actions might land, not anticipating the feelings of others. This past year I confess, not with pride, to more of that than usual.

We are all worn out and fragile from helplessly watching a pandemic take so many lives and hurt so many loved ones, from the changes it has brought to our lifestyles. Our healthcare professionals—truly heroic always and most especially now—are raw with fatigue. We’ve lost some of them to the novel coronavirus, some to depression, even suicide. 

This massive public health issue is overlaid atop issues that have reached a critical point of no return—racism, violence, climate change, economic injustice, more. Several people I know are also going through personal challenges and losses. Unemployment is high, many are struggling to pay rent and mortgages, to put food on the table.

Even in the best of times, we are fragile packages in a very fragile world, and inside fragile packages are both dangerous things like ticking bombs and priceless, beautiful, breakable things like fine crystal. A fragile vase, even one that’s been broken and glued back together, can still hold water.

This cracked old vase spilled some this morning reading the headlines about the vaccine-filled trucks going on the road. The great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn—forming the Christmas Star or Star of Bethlehem—will occur on the solstice. It has not been this visible since 1226. In January, a new administration takes office in the US. Out of our fragility rise embers of hope, joy, light, strength.  

Happy Solstice, Joyeux Noël!

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You Are a Superhero

Several years ago, I attended a dinner party in Washington, DC where there was a lively discussion about whatever political crisis was happening then, perhaps the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal or maybe it was the Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Iraq War. Whatever it was, the volume got louder while I sat mutely wondering how to insert myself. And then our hostess leaned into me and said, “Can you believe what happened in Rex Morgan today?” making me laugh, landing me back on terra firma. For those of you unfortunate enough not to know, Rex Morgan, MD is a long-running soap opera comic strip.

It’s rare this year to be at many dinner parties. Nor do I suppose Rex Morgan, MD could come to my rescue during this time of colossal crises. But when things are as they are—so outsized and incredulous as to be nearly unbelievable—it’s hard for me not to think in mythological, archetypal fairy tale or comic book terms. Dark versus light, good versus evil, real live superheroes gone to the heavens (thank you, Ruth Bader Ginsburg), and not only towns but whole countries in need of dragon slayers to staunch the offering of souls while the Earth beneath us literally burns, quakes and floods. 

What is the meaning of all of this playing out at once—narcissistic leaders, a global pandemic, environmental destruction, racial and gender injustice, economic instability and more? What is the historical, spiritual, cosmic, psychic significance? Oh, it’s been brewing… Are we having a reckoning with karmic justice? 

Part of what is driving a roiling macro anxiety is there are no clear answers, we know we have a long way to go, and also the realization that our sense of control is an illusion. We can strive to respond from our best hearts; that much we can control. And some days our best hearts will be better than others, and that is okay.

We are still allowed to laugh, encouraged to wherever we can find that elixir. And Mother Nature, who has been so unutterably abused by us, still manages to teach us resilience and feed us soul food with her beauty. Woods, here I come. Rex Morgan, MD, perhaps you are worth another look. Friends, family and colleagues who share laughter and fuel hope when mine is waning, call, text, Zoom, social distance with me. Be a superhero when you can. Let me be yours. 

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Love in the Time of Always

dove+with+band“They were together in silence like an old married couple wary of life, beyond the pitfalls of passion, beyond the brutal mockery of hope and the phantoms of disillusion; beyond love. For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death.” Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez

Love in the Time of Cholera plays out against the backdrop of a cholera outbreak in what is probably Columbia between about 1880 and 1930. The plot revolves around a love story, one that takes a circuitous route after a star-crossed beginning.

As young lovers in a secret epistolary relationship, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza are forced by her father to separate. Fermina moves on, marrying a renowned doctor, Juvenal Urbino. Florentino, meanwhile, holds steadfast in his love for Fermina, even after she rejects him and weds another. While he is not carnally faithful, he is in spirit, in heart. More than a half-century later, after both have lived full lives, when Dr. Urbino dies, and Florentino and Fermina are well past their prime, Florentino makes his move again, rekindling the passion from their youth.

During the story Florentino’s mother thinks he is infected with cholera, but it is love that is an affliction that consumes him making him physically sick. When later his mother tells him the only disease he ever had was cholera, his response is “No, Mama, you confused cholera with love.”

Diseases and viruses attack not only the body, but the mind and spirit. It can be hard to hold fast to the spirit now. People are suffering at every level. The usual illnesses and losses do not take a backseat; instead they are a parallel pain to the macro pandemic. The inability to physically comfort one another is another layer of our very personal and collective despair and bewilderment. New worries—economic and otherwise—compound the struggle to find peace, to hold steadfast.

We have our lifeboats—family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, amazing strangers. Bearing witness to the profound dedication and courage around us is at once buoying and heart-wrenching making our unbreakable bond to one another manifest. Nature, throughout it all, reveals anew the beauty and continuity of life, the strength and certainty of it in this time of great fragility.

Beyond love is more love, limitless love. We are called to lead with love always. Everything that happens—whether perceived as good or bad—is a reflection of, and held by Love—the Divine, God, Buddha, Grace, Higher Power, Your Best Self—whatever you choose to name it (or not). Our souls, much like Florentino’s unwavering, fearless love, know no fear. They know that love, our essence, never really dies; it transforms but lives on always.