18/05/2020
Hi all. Just thought I'd like to share some thoughts about the crisis we find ourselves living through. I would guess that one of the hardest things we've had to try to get our heads around has been the apparently meaningless nature of the event; how do we position ourselves in an existence compromised and largely controlled by an invisible, amoral, and unpredictably random enemy?
Being an asthmatic, I have been self-isolating, along with the rest of my family, for 63 days now (and counting!). It quickly became clear to me that, to confront an absence of meaning, I had to FIND meaning. To find purpose. To enquire of life: "What is my task? What do you want me to do?" The answer that presented itself was the need to find a role, one that I could enact that was not only important to me, but important to those closest to me. Thus, I became the (gate)keeper of my family's wellbeing and self-care, both physical and mental; I am the one who screens what comes into the house every day, the packages, the food deliveries and so on, applying liberal blasts of anti-bac spray to every wrapping or surface, and I am also the one who tidies and cleans our living areas, keeping them free from the sort of small-scale chaos and clutter that could otherwise negatively feed into troubled minds. And my family have their roles too, and they all complement and fit with everybody else's.
These might seem to some like small, everyday things. But those roles bestow meaning, purpose, onto our lives, they give us the motivation to get up in the morning when sometimes we would like to just roll over and go back to sleep, our heads throbbing with the latest, awful COVID-19 figures. And they also remind us what we are fighting to protect, so that we can enjoy them to their fullest again when we can finally walk free.
I realise that I am luckier than some; I have a loving family, a safe place to live, and food on the table. But whoever you are, if you dig deep enough, you will find a meaning, unique to you, and a task, a challenge, that only you can rise to. But you have to choose to do it, and - unlike the outside world where our freedoms are so acutely curtailed - inside ourselves, we HAVE the freedom to choose to do it....and this cannot be taken away from any of us.
Take care, and speak soon x
