Corona and Social Distancing: Should we Change How we Live? Or, Live to Make Change?

This is a wacky new normal.  NYC is in a state of disorientation of fear and alert, with untold casualties. For me it echoes Hurricane Sandy, where the streets were empty; people stumbling along like zombies in the afflicted areas, yet in some unaffected pockets, life went on as usual.  My husband and friends, a community from advertising, rallied with trucks and supplies, where we went from door to door to assist the elderly stuck in high rises, and removed ruined furniture and appliances from leveled homes. The contact and comraderie was adrenaline inducing, and the visible easing of suffering tangible.

But with this insidious, invisible enemy we now face, we are mandated to isolate ourselves in order to save others. It is counter intuitive, confusing, and disorienting in an apocalyptic way.

In the last several years of my marriage, I’ve begun attending church with my husband on alternate Sundays, although I’m Jewish and was raised in the tradition. The sermons and themes are always applicable to how we lead our lives as upwardly mobile New Yorkers, and I leave with a slightly less insular, self-serving agenda. It reorganizes my priorities as well as stimulates my mind and soul.  We occasionally see friends there, and the music and voices singing joyously is intoxicating and puts a spring in my step.  (Not to mention the incentive of brunch and bloody marys afterwards at Café Luxemborg).

This Sunday, our church, like most in New York, canceled services and instead, streamed the sermon online. My husband and I, like almost everyone in recent weeks, woke up off kilter. It’s Sunday, but it’s not an ordinary Sunday, a day of conscious rest, where we gird ourselves for a myopic week of intense work.  I’m in the midst of writing a screenplay, and building a writing coaching business on the heels of having left a secure day job, and my husband is a data science (where data challenges abound).  Like countless others, his office is closed. It makes us all realize how much solace we derive from our dependable routines, which are now upended. 

The question this morning became – how do we connect, and ask the bigger questions about our purpose in this world when things are so uncertain, where humanity is at risk and frightened? 

In what is now surreally becoming what many are discovering as “typical quarantine fashion,” we decided to project the sermon onto our dining room wall. We don’t have curtains (and our apartment is sunny AF) so we hung a sheet on the windows, sat on the couch, and instead of sitting in a room of 800 people facing a stage, we sipped our coffee mugs in our pajamas, while our energetic (aka crazy hyper) puppy, Posey, tried to make sense of the rearrangement by darting back and forth.  

The pastor dove into what rang true. As New Yorkers…our culture as a whole, has been in self-actualization mode. Autonomy and attainment… successful careers, thriving children, and creative accomplishments, define and provide us with self worth. It is our currency. Yet, it’s spiritually exhausting. “Am I good enough? Am I liked enough? Did I do the right thing? Am I too giving or too selfish? Am I too involved or too removed? Did I offend someone while looking after my own?” It is endless. 

And now that we are hit with a pandemic of unknown proportions, we are forced to stop. A hard reset. 

What does this mean? What are the things we’ve been holding on to, our plans with friends, our ascensions of a ladder, our promotions, and while they are undoubtedly important, are they ultimate? What matters most? 

My husband and I took this in, but kept getting interrupted by the wifi cutting out. By the projector that fell off its perch on the bottle of Lysol wipes (one of three I was psyched to have bought), as Posey decided to walk right into the cord that connected it to the wall and topple it down. I started to laugh, but held it in, because, hey, this is serious spiritual business.

We tried to calm the dog down, as she barked at us, and then looked at the projection, tail wagging and alert, “Wait, who’s in our house?? I thought visitors were a no no.”

As the pastor began to talk more about our pre-Corona mindset of, “You do you,”  we heard little paws running on our periphery.  We turned and saw Posey running into the living room with my husband’s underwear in her mouth. 

Next, the pastor talked about the level of anxiety we all most feel, as Posey’s eyes swirled anxiously and she started to chew on the couch pillows. We started to laugh, and then laughed harder, as a fluff of pillow stuffing stuck to her chin. She resembled a biblical sage. 

And perhaps, she is. Perhaps there is a message in all of this frivolity amidst the seriousness.  

Keep doing you. But in new, unforeseen ways.  Sometimes the signs are too small for us to see, so when they’re this big, perhaps we are being asked to open our eyes wider. 

In this unpredictable, fraught season, maybe it’s not about our actions, but the inverse. How do our intentional inactions of pulling back, making effortful change, despite the discomfort, affect others in ways we will never see or know?

Maybe ‘doing you’ means doing for others. Even though it’s invisible. 

Excerpted from The Pitchsmith