One of the few regular things I do these days is take a daily call from my sister as she commutes into work. In Seattle, she has responsibility for training and deploying RNs into Urgent Respiratory Clinics. Like so many of our healthcare workers and first responders, she’s working 12 hour days. It’s not lost on me that while she’s on the battlefield, I could be in the bathtub.
This crisis has either stopped you in your tracks or demanded more out of you than you thought possible. It’s a two party system: Key Workers and Everyone Else. The payloads are vastly different but we all have a part to play even if that part is confined to a thousand or so square feet.
For those of us not fighting on the front lines or for our lives, we know there’s some uncut gems in waiting. We have all read stories of how innovation, creativity and kindness are often sparked during times such as these. And while few of us will make discoveries in calculus, optics and a little thing called gravity like Sir Issac Newton did while social distancing during the Great Plague of 1666, a more modest light bulb moment might be possible.
I don’t know about you but I’m still waiting for the pivot moment. This time in isolation no longer feels like a shock but it continues to feel like a holding pattern. We all know a massive reset button is being pushed and it isn’t clear how and when we might expect to come out the other side. Each day the reality of our house arrest settles in a little bit deeper but our minds and hearts haven’t yet gone free range. We all have loved ones we are concerned for.
One of my children reminded me this morning that instead of making my “Isolation Lists” for Facebook I could be studying French. To which I say c'est la vie. I’m not there yet. I’m here in this place where schedules have been laid bare and the shield of busyness suspended, looking for stability in an uncertain global crisis.
This brush with a Real Life Drama is confirming that the world in all its beauty can be as terrifying as we feared. Our hunches were right even if we misjudged the thing that would bring us to a standstill. Interconnectedness used to be a nice but hollow word but which we now know to be serious and true. We are in fact learning that no one has easier love than this, to lay down on the couch for one’s friends.
From the looks of it, we will have all of April and likely May to make our pivot. The world may be shut down, but thankfully many of us still have a long runway to start up.