I approached the door to the post office this morning and stopped. Should I touch the door handle with my bare hand? Cover my hand with my shirt? Run back to my car for a wipe? I sighed at the dilemma that something as simple as opening a door has become, then I reached out one finger to open it. I stepped inside and stopped on a red tape line. I looked ahead and took in the masked line of people ahead of me waiting in silence, the heavy plastic draped in front of the once wide open clerk windows, the postal workers dressed more like they were prepared to draw a blood sample from me than to accept my envelopes of homemade masks. The other customers and I waited quietly, moving up another six feet to the next red line on the floor as needed, respectful of each other's personal space. How quickly we've adjusted to the unthinkable. I took it all in and thought to myself, "yes we've adjusted, we'll continue to adjust, moment to moment".
I've been actively studying and practicing Mindfulness for the last three years. I completed a program through the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts and developed a passion for practices that I believe have saved my life, that I believe, without exaggeration, could save all of our lives and enrich our experience as human beings. I embarked on a path motivated by self-interest, on a quest to cure myself. I thought it was my own path, with it's own definite beginning and, I hoped, it's own definite ending. What I found instead is that the path is an ever widening spiral, that the path is universal, that the path is life itself. In the words of Ram Dass, "We are all just walking each other home."
There are many definitions of Mindfulness, all appropriate, all accurate. It is the practice of acknowledging, accepting and experiencing our emotions so that we can control them rather than be controlled by them. It is being awake and alive to the present moment so to experience it in it's entirety. It is recognizing that the present moment is all that exists right now. It is the acceptance that nothing is permanent: no situation, no emotion, no thought.
Mindfulness taught me that I could survive any moment, even in suffering, because no moment is forever. I could cry and rage and allow any and every emotion to surface in me with the knowledge that they were all just messengers flowing through me and moving on. Mindfulness made it easy to see that so much of what we humans can get caught up in can be let go. It allowed me to experience the grace and relief of releasing what we cannot possibly control. Mindfulness demonstrated to me that life is most comfortable, most joyful, most free of worry, when experienced in present moments. Most importantly, to my PTSD brain, mindfulness whispered, "not everything is life or death".
Now we are here, in this present moment, which happens to be life or death. How do we handle the present moment when the present moment feels like a post-apocalyptic alternate reality where postal clerks are outfitted to protect themselves from contamination by a deadly virus that is killing people by the thousands? How do we handle the present moment where the decision to even go to the post office or the grocery store may literally be a life or death one? How do we control the feelings of anxiety and fear that come and go throughout the day and make it difficult to sleep at night?
We handle them the same as all the other moments. We breathe, deeply, in and out. We recognize that we are breathing in and out and take a second to take comfort in that. We ground ourselves in the here and now - select one object you can see and focus on it, select one sound you can hear and listen to it, select a food or a drink that brings you comfort and taste it, light a candle with a scent that you enjoy and let it fill the room, blanket yourself with something that makes you feel secure. In this moment we are ok. We cannot control the future moments of this pandemic, but that is no different than any other day. We can however root ourselves in THIS moment, and re-root ourselves as many times as we need to.
Be here now.
There will be the thoughts:
What if I get sick? Well, you'll handle it in the moment that you do. And you may not get sick.
What if someone I love gets sick? Well, you'll figure out how to help them in that moment. And they may not.
What if I run out of food? You will figure out how to get some if you do. And you may not.
What if I can't pay my bills? You will figure out how to defer them if you need to. And you may not have to.
What if, what if, what if, what if....
What if is not now. What if is not the present moment. In the present moment you are reading this and you are ok. You will handle the other moments as they come. Some will be difficult, some will be wonderful. But the vast majority of them will be ok.
In the meantime you will do whatever work you need to do, engage in any pastime that brings you peace, show yourself and those around you kindness and compassion, and allow yourself to experience, without judgement, any emotions that arise. You will cry, you will laugh, you will get angry. You can live all of those moments. And they will pass.
I mailed the masks I've made and left the post office. I drove home with the moonroof open to the mild weather. I took a walk in the sun. I showered, had something to eat, chatted with a neighbor from twelve feet away, accepted the fact that my teenage daughter had left a note on her door to let her sleep "really, really late" and sat down to write out my thoughts. Those moments were ok.
This moment is ok.
There will be a moment at some point when the post office removes the red tape lines from the floor, when we take off our masks, when we once again wander carefree into a store just to browse at things that we don't need. Those moments will come as surely as these moments will pass. Not even a pandemic is permanent.
Friends, please reach out if you need help with these moments.
