Love in The Time of Corona

I flew from London to New York Last week to see my 86 year old mother. With travel restrictions in place, I find the thought of not being able to get to her, should she need me, almost intolerable. So I am glad I went. We hugged and laughed and ate lunch and dinner together for three days. The beauty of her dementia is that she doesn’t carry a lot of worry. Her response to the rising pandemic panic was, “wear gloves”.

I love her.

I also love my two children and my husband, so I am back in London, having done my bit to warm the climate.

While I was on the plane, I took out my notebook to clear my head. This is what I wrote:

The man behind me is a cougher…and a sniffler. I want to turn around and say WTF but I don’t. So far I have taken 2 Wellness pills, 1 Airborne fizzy thing, 2 zinc lozenges and I have washed my hands no fewer than 9 times. I have not done a Naomi. I am not wearing gloves or a mask. I am on the day flight. The sun is streaming through the window on my right and I am trying to reframe the concept of ‘travel restriction’ so that I don’t spend my Coronication back in the UK trying to score tranquillisers because my heart is in two places. Like many of my generation, I have taken freedom of movement for granted.

I need to change my lenses - to see things in a new way. I need to get my Elizabeth Bennet on and go 19th century on this thing - needlework, reading and long walks (my friend in Milan says they are allowed to walk and bike - just not congregate).

What else…

1) Go Yoda

This may be the time for me to deepen my understanding of mindfulness; to actually crack open Pema Chodron’s famous book, The Wisdom of Uncertainty. If ever there was a time to ‘be here now’ - this is it, right? For years I carried around a small book by Eckhart Tolle called, Stillness Speaks. Maybe this the moment to hear what stillness has to say. I have always been a fair weather meditator. The real masters advocate a daily practice and value discipline. I could try to embrace both. What a relief it would be to become a more grounded, less reactive person. I also notice that our Corona coincides with Lent in the Christian calendar. Could I give up being driven by pleasure and fear? Could I become more centred in my heart? That might be nice. And then there’s Passover and then Ramadan.

2) Bow Down to The Real She-E-O

I know I need nature to do all of the above. Even if it means contemplating a daffodil The good news is that it is Spring. Is there a green lining to this thing? Is Corona’s havoc actually Mother Nature taking things into her own hands here? Was she fed up with our faffing around? We have all seen the pictures of China and Italy without smog. Is this the disruption we needed to see that we can actually do something to stop climate change and start living more in line with our values? Meetings are moving to video, people are working from home…well you know, the list goes on. Is nature’s intelligence, however brutal, at work here?

3) Get Curious about Human Behaviour

Why do we cling to fear when it makes us so unhappy? What is our relationship with mortality? What is the great toilet paper shortage really about? If shopping is a form of control? Why are we leaving the shell pasta on the supermarket shelves? What is my friend Stretch going to do with his 25 jars of Hellman’s Mayonnaise that he purchased for this crisis? What is our relationship with meat now? What about waste? What do I value more as a result of this? What do I less?

4) Think of Others

My family can all mostly work from home and earn a living. I am not yet elderly. I don’t have to self isolate with small children or even teenagers. I don’t work in the service industry. I am not part of the gig economy. I don’t own a restaurant or a shop. My immune system works. So the question must then become, not how can I keep calm under these circumstances but rather how can I help?

4) Try Belonging

I have always lived in big cities and I barely know my neighbours. I don’t have a church or even a book group. I have friends, but that is different.

This makes me think of Tim Smit’s Big Lunch project which I have been meaning to take part in for years; but haven’t. Smit runs the Eden Project in Cornwall. He founded the Big Lunch to get us to sit down once a year with our neighbours. Smit drilled down on human behaviour, finally asking how are we going to look after the planet if we can’t take the time to know our neighbour? Good question.

Health experts and gerontologists tell us that a sense of community is more important than diet and lifestyle combined. And yet whether it is travel, office life, our screen addictions or our fearful natures - real, in-the-flesh community has not been a cultural priority for a while. So I know the protocol is for us to separate ourselves right now, but it is possible that surmounting the real threats of this pandemic will require us to come together.

5) Get A Dog

Is this a good time?