#2 / Translate Your Love Into Action
Hi everyone,
Welcome to weekly email #2! Thanks for sticking around — I feel like the only thing that's not cancelled right now.
(P.S. If you're getting this and you didn't sign up, it's because I love you enough to risk spamming you.)
Maybe I won’t totally avoid the virus thing, like I hinted I’d be doing last week. Lockdown is life right now. Well, it is, and it isn’t. Part of me is tempted to throw up my hands and say nothing else matters because of this. All virus all the time, baby! That part of me is not the whole of me, and it’s not the part of me I want to live out of. At the same time, I feel it's important to document these experiences, not just for history and my future self, but especially if it can help anyone out there to know that I'm doing okay and that you're not alone.
I want to normalize my daily situation as much as possible. This is a time to stick to my commitments and enjoy what I have. And I’ll contribute to my community by picking up gift certificates and making donations, broadcasting my message and maintaining radio contact with you all, taking care of my business, and I guess just sitting on the couch!
One thing that helped this week was my friend Margo’s piece, "Coronavirus Is Serious, But Panic Is Optional." I’ve been thinking a lot about Staying Informed. Even though I’ve made choices over the years to avoid the 24/7 news cycle, scale back social media consumption, and prioritize the things I can control — this week I’ve reverted to checking the news many times per day and I’ve detected a corresponding rise in my anxiety and fear levels.
True, that's going around; it’s in the air. We’re all taking it in from the world at large. Fear spreads faster than a virus. But I’ve also opened more doors and windows through which these currents are blowing into my house. I started asking myself, “why am I doing this?” Why do I suddenly feel compelled to form a working understanding of epidemiology and how viruses attack cells? Did I care about this two weeks ago? Am I going to do anything productive with this knowledge?
The currency of today’s media economy is attention. Even for reputable outlets like the NYT or Slate that put out quality content, their goal is to make me click headlines so they can show me ads. Once I do that, they have no financial incentive to keep me reading. And how do they get me to click headlines? They put the fear of god in me.
On Sunday afternoon we ordered sandwiches to go from the Madrileño cafe around the corner. The head of the Illinois Department of Public Health had just counseled that we should act as though any person we encounter has the virus. While Francisco sliced us some fresh Serrano ham, we went next door to the Mexican bakery for treats, and there were people in there, and the fear seized me.
I opened the doors to the cases with my sleeve. I trembled when more customers came in, and tried to keep my distance. We picked out some cookies and rolls and waited in line for the workers to finish wrapping up a three-layer birthday cake, but they were struggling. The longer we waited, the faster I could feel the blood rushing through my body. I haven’t been that scared in a long time. It wasn’t like the anxiety I feel before speaking to a group, or meeting someone new. It was real, actual fear.
I don’t think that fear came from the health department’s proviso. I think it came from all the reports I read earlier in the day about the scale that community spread was going to take here, and how badly it would devastate our health care systems, and how many people would die in pain and alone. Those things may happen, but they weren’t going to happen to me, standing in line at the bakery, and there wasn’t going to be anything I could do about them anyway.
What am I doing, then, to fight this epidemic, if I won’t be worrying as much about stock market plunges and the Defense Production Act? I’m doing the dishes and the laundry and shopping at the grocery store. I’m married to a health care worker who is doing demanding work to keep our community safe from disease. She needs me to keep the fires burning at home. I can do that, and I can write this.
More Helpful Things
Source: TheCounselingTeacher.com
Source: xkcd
Reading
I’ve been on the Nazi book for a few months now, which means I haven’t started any new books since then. It felt like the time. So yesterday I picked up Why The Jews Rejected Jesus by David Klinghoffer. I'm filling the substantial gaps in my knowledge of Jewish history, especially since I started my Jewish social justice fellowship in November. And I know very little about Jesus and his time. I'd like to know more about who he was, what he believed, and why the world has reacted the way it has in his wake.
One of the questions the book examines is: "what would the world be like if the Jews had accepted Jesus?" I've always been fascinated with wondering why the world is the way that it is. History is built on reason, but also on flukes. Events occur with an N of 1. There's no running it back. What-ifs are instructive, but also, they're just fun. The book's subtitle is "The Turning Point in Western History." So: why did it turn that way, and what if it had gone a different direction?
Mood
Ezra Furman — “Evening Prayer aka Justice”
This right here is the anthem.
If you’ve got the taste for transcendence
Then translate your love into action
And participate in the fight now
For a creed you can truly believe