Losing that 'boundless sense of optimism'

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Damir Marusic reflects on the emotional damage done by two years of pandemic:

Maybe as the variants get less deadly and we get better at managing sporadic outbreaks of novel mutations, something approaching the previous normalcy will re-emerge. But that’s not really what we mean when we say “getting back to normal.” We want to have our innocence restored, to once again believe in a kind of permanence to our lives. I think that’s gone for good, though. That longed-for permanence is similar to the sense of ourselves we have before we experience the death of a friend. We implicitly believed we were somehow indestructible. Not immortal, but that the same rules didn’t exactly apply to us. A friend’s death shows us that in fact they do. It’s the same with COVID.

It’s a lesson we can, with time, choose not to dwell on but can never unlearn. It’s a part of growing wiser. Eventually we move on, having internalized these hard lessons. Eventually, we straighten up out of our crouch and re-engage with the world. We may memory-hole much of the emptiness that characterized the last two years of our lives, but we won’t regain that sense of boundless optimism born of a belief in stability that we had before.

Emphasis added. The bolded lines caught me up short because they described precisely the same sense I had about 10 years ago, after I'd lost my job and then had a close brush with death all in the span of a year. When I came out the other side -- to the extent that I did -- the thing I mourned most, aside from my lost health, was the death of that "boundless optimism." Somewhere in the back of my head, I think I'd believed that things would always work out somehow, because they always had. (Believe me, I know what a privilege -- perhaps callow -- it was to have ever possessed such a belief.) After my year-plus of calamity, I no longer felt that to be true: Sometimes things don't work out. Sometimes the losses are permanent. 

There's been a lot of talk the last few years about the trauma we're all experiencing. But Marusic's reflections prompt another possibility: Quite inadvertently, we've all been given what amounts to a midlife crisis at the exact same time -- come face-to-face with our mortality, a lesson that we can't ever quite unforget. We're more aware of our boundaries, our limits, a sense that time is running out because it always is. It's natural that eventually, for most of us, "boundless optimism" fades with age. That's life, and life experience. But it's a tragedy for so many of us to have experienced as younger people, because so much of what is created and made by human beings comes from the ferment of energy and joy that isn't yet haunted by death. I wonder what we're losing, that we've lost, that we can't see because it was never made.

Reverting to pandemic habits

I find that after a couple of months of getting out, seeing people, and really enjoying it, I'm reverting to old habits from the early quarantine era -- not leaving the house much, not exercising much, and not engaging the world beyond my driveway all that much. I'm vaxxed, but the pandemic is raging once again and the old habits kept me alive for more than a year. 

But I've got to be more intentional about all this. I don't want to go back to the old ways.

So...

 I literally just put on a belt for the first time in a year.

I'm not feeling resilient

It's really cold in Lawrence, Kansas this week -- the temperature as I write this is 8 degrees Fahrenheit. As a result, I've been forced inside more than usual. Instead of spending an hour or two a day strolling along the Kansas River and chilling out, I've more or less been home all day. (I did make a trip to Sonic just to sit and read, but without the Vitamin D and physical activity, it's just not the same thing.)

So I'm having one of those moments where pandemic-induced isolation is driving me a little bit crazy. Feeling edgy, sad, tired, depressed. More than usual, I mean. We've been mostly isolated for nearly a year now. Haven't left town. Haven't seen my wife's parents. Haven't gotten to stand closer than six feet to my dad. 

I'm tired of this. I'm not feeling resilient.

It's weird...

 ...when I see my reflection while wearing a mask and see my dad's eyes looking back at me.

In 2021, I need to rebuild my personal community

When my family returned to Lawrence, Kan. in 2016, there was a group of people waiting at the house we were moving into to help us move in. It was a tremendous affirmation of our decision to come "home," reflecting the relationships we'd made here during my first stint living in the town from 2000 to 2008.

I feel like I've squandered that moment.

I'm reading Timothy Carney's "Alienated America" at the moment, and early on he describes the realization that the people who had helped his family were all connected by institutions.

Even before the pandemic, I was a freelance writer who works from home and who attends church once or twice a year. It didn't feel great! I could go days without leaving the house, even, unless I made a real effort. Oh, I have a few friends I see now and again, and sitting outside the coffee shop with a socially distanced group of men has saved my sanity over the last few months, but the truth is it has been awhile since I was enmeshed in the networks he describes here. I feel their absence.

To be sure, I'm not sure how to reclaim those networks for myself. But I've come to realize I need to try, somehow.

Pandemic stress dreams

I dreamed last night I went without a mask into a crowded restaurant where nobody else was wearing a mask, and realizing I probably had just signed my own death warrant.

I didn't sleep well last night.

Endurance

I've been thinking lately that we Americans are going to need a virtue we haven't been much called on to collectively display lately: Endurance. It seems likely that we're not going to live so close to the top of Maslow's pyramid as we have for most of my lifetime, but that doesn't mean we can or should give up. We're simply going to have to learn to endure bad times and persevere through them.

Our art these days doesn't teach us much about endurance, but it used to. I listened to this song this morning:

Well, there's a dark and a troubled side of life
There's a bright and a sunny side too
But if you meet with the darkness and strife
The sunny side we also may view

Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side
Keep on the sunny side of life
It will help us every day, it will brighten all the way
If we keep on the sunny side of life

Oh, the storm and its fury broke today
Crushing hopes that we cherish so dear
Clouds and storms will in time pass away
The sun again will shine bright and clear

It's probably time to get into that mindset.

Coronavirus Diary: Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

My big regret from the last decade or so of my life is that I've spent too much time living in my head and in cyberspace and not enough in real life with real people, and now that it's better to live in cyberspace than in real places, I find I'm going a bit stir-crazy. I miss tangible experiences.

Coronavirus Diary: There's only so many times you can binge-watch "Parks & Recreation"

I am at the stage of pandemic isolation where there isn't much left for me to re-watch on TV that brings comfort -- or, at least, I can't do it without diminishing returns. "Parks & Rec" is great, but you can only go to that well so many times.

I've been allowing myself some socially distanced socialization lately -- mostly, standing out in front of the coffee shop with a small group of men (it's usually all men, most of them a bit older than I am) -- and chatting for a few minutes. Is it distanced enough? I don't know. I'm terrified it's not. But I've also been going stir-crazy in isolation, so I've decided I will allow myself that little bit. If the crowd gets too large, I leave.

I hope I don't regret it.

I hope my family doesn't regret it.

There isn't a lot bringing me joy these days. The other morning, walking my daily two miles in the rain, I felt a sense of well-being I haven't felt in awhile. But it passed. Most days I'm stuck on "dread" and "despair" as my dominant emotions. All I can do is the bit of work that I have, and try not to let my son see what I'm feeling, lest I discourage him. School seems to be going well for the most part. There is that, at least. I wonder if he is learning anything that will help him survive the terrible times I suspect are coming.

A few years back, I read that depressed people are actually ... just more realistic than optimists. I am feeling very realistic lately.

A good walk just might save my life

 

Yesterday, I was so angry at the state of the world -- justifiably, I think -- that I actually thought for a few minutes I was giving myself a heart attack. I wasn't. But the rage I was feeling about everything manifested itself as, well, physical pain.

Since the beginning of August, I have been getting out every day to walk a couple of miles. Before that, I'd gotten very pandemic sedentary: My Apple Health app tells me I averaged 365 steps a day in July. That's bad. So I made a goal of 5,000 steps a day, and I've mostly stuck with it. It is the most consistent exercise I've gotten since 2002. (My body and I don't always have a great relationship. I'm kind of a "stuck in my head" guy.

Anyway, it was raining this morning. I walked anyway. Through the downtown of my suburbanish college town and back, through the park. And I felt something I hadn't felt in months, maybe years: Maybe it was joy? I don't know. It felt good, though.

The state of the world is cause for rage. And sometimes I have to live with that anger. But I am not capable of living with it so acutely. The walk let me listen to music -- I've gotten very deeply into comfort music of late (more on that later) -- but otherwise I wasn't staring at a screen, obsessing about things. I let my mind get to other places. Getting physical activity every day is good in its own right. But the mental health aspect is pretty important too. A good walk just might save my life.

My son just came to me, teary-eyed, because the link he needs to get into his afternoon class wasn't working

 It might be a long school year.

Coronavirus Diary: Too much, and not enough reading

I realized today that by trying to read every book at the same time, I'm not making a huge amount of progress at any reading. So. Back down to two books or so -- one fiction, one non-fiction -- and try to make a go of it from there.

Losing our past to the coronavirus

 

This place was once my home away from home.

I don't mean that casually. In my late 20s and early 30s, when I was still single, I would often stop by in the morning for a cup of coffee before going to work. I'd grab a quick bite to eat at lunch, then sit here with a book for 20 or 30 minutes with a second cup of coffee. And many evenings, after grabbing a quick supper, I'd sit here in the evening for more reading and another cup. (This was back before I realized that all the caffeine was messing up my sleep.)

This was my Cheers. I knew the names of all the regulars. They knew me. Some of my longest friendships were formed here -- before the pandemic set in, my family was having regular suppers with a woman who was a barista at this shop for more than a decade. When I stopped going to church in the mid-aughts, this was where I spent my Sunday mornings.

La Prima Tazza is still alive. But right now it's not the same, obviously. There is no lingering over a book in the front window, reading and watching the world go buy. You go inside, get your drink, and get outside as efficiently and expeditiously as possible.

I spent some time on the block this morning. Free State Brewery next door is where my friends and I spent a lot of evenings, grabbing a quick beer or having dinner. On the other side, Liberty Hall movie theater changed my moviegoing life. Around the block, Raven Book Store shaped the reader I've become as an adult. And a little further down the block is the old Post Office -- now a Blue Cross office building, but once upon a time the headquarters for the newspaper where I grew up professionally.

The newspaper has moved. The bookstore does delivery, but no browsing for now. Liberty Hall is only open a couple of days a week -- and, well, I'm not ready to sit in a movie theater yet.

The future is uncertain for all of us right now, but one of the things that devastates me about the pandemic is how it threatens the past -- how it threatens not just our lives, but the places and people who gave us life, that shaped who we are ... who I am. I realized this morning that I don't just miss the coffee shop and its people. I miss coffee shop music.

Isn't that weird?

Coronavirus Diary: Reading in a Pandemic

A lot of people have been in "comfort food" reading mode since the pandemic started, and I can't blame them. On the TV front, I've rewatched COMMUNITY already, as well as -- God help me -- COUGAR TOWN. Which is bad. Really bad. And yet.

On the book front, though, it's a different story. I feel like, suddenly, I am running out of reading time and so I am trying to cram in every great book I've ever wanted to read. I don't have patience for the sci-fi pulp I was reading as recently as January. I want books I suspect will enrich me, challenge me, or teach me something. And I panic at the thought of all the reading I want to do that is, as yet -- and might well forever be -- unfinished.

Right now, I am juggling four books -- trying to get a chapter a day or more out of each.

LETTERS FROM A STOIC, by Seneca

MOBY DICK, by Herman Melville

THE REACTIONARY MIND, by Corey Robin

FREDERICK DOUGLASS: PROPHET OF FREEDOM by David Blight.

I've also, in the last few months, read and finished nonfiction books about Kurt Vonnegut's writing philosophy, American history, Fred Phelps' family, homebuilding and, well, THE JORDAN RULES. (My bit of comfort reading, perhaps.) I've also read Toni Morrison's BELOVED. When I finish MOBY DICK, I hope to turn to THE TIN DRUM, by Gunter Grass.

I do wonder from time to time what the purpose of all this is: If it is true that time is running short, what's the point? All the reading I have done will die with me, right? I can only hope that some of what I am absorbing translates into me writing better, more thoughtfully, and with more perspectives and more information in mind. And hopefully, too, it translates into me acting in real life with some greater empathy and wisdom. 

But who really knows? All I know is that I am a reader. Or, at least, I want to be a reader, because the people I want to be like are readers. I guess that will have to be good enough. 

Coronavirus Diary: I am cursing a lot

Just a quick note: I think the relative isolation of not-quite-full quarantine is getting to me. I am cursing more these days, more likely to lose my temper than I have been for awhile. Most of the time, I don't even realize that I'm on the raggedy edge until I hear myself say something kind of shitty out loud. I don't like this. For the sake of my family and my own sanity, I need to figure out how to better let off steam.

I worry I am becoming this guy:

Coronavirus Diary: Cabin fever

Here is how I deal with the stress of being stuck mostly in a small house with a kid who hasn't seen his friends in four months:

I go to Sonic every day at noon and order a large iced tea.

I sit there for an hour in the family minivan, more or less, but basically until I've finished eating all the ice in the cup. 

It gets me out of the house. I can sit in the shade for an hour, socially distanced. I can get away from the people I am around all the time. And it gives structure to the day. 

I'm sure there is a better way of getting these benefits than sitting at Sonic every day. But it seems to be what I am capable of right now.

Coronavirus Diary: The limits of being an introvert

I used to be an extrovert. When I was single, it was rare the night I went home from work, had a meal, and went to bed. I'd stay out, and stay out late -- not always with people, but always in a place where I could be with people.

Getting married didn't change that -- not the desire part, anyway. (Obviously, my habits did.) Having a kid didn't change that. But the surgeries I had in 2011 did.

Going out since then has taken energy. It's been difficult to arse myself to do much but sit on the couch and stare at a computer. Occasionally, I'd get out to have breakfast with a friend. But mostly I stayed home, even to work. I missed my old way of being, but I also didn't know how to be a person among people the way I used to. 

It was kind of depressing.

So. Not a lot changed for me when the pandemic set in. I work at home. I stare at the screen. I eat. I go to sleep.

Somewhere in the last week, though, I've hit my limit. I am desperate for people again. I miss hugging people. I miss enjoying just being around them. I miss conversations. I miss feeling good about having the friends that I have after a conversation.

I'm feeling kind of crazy. I also don't want to die. I hate everything I failed to do when I could do it. And I fear that if I can do it again, I'll go back to not doing it. 

Donald Trump is holding our children hostage to his narcissism

Oh boy:

As I mentioned earlier today, we've already decided to keep our son at home this fall. You know why we made that decision? Well, it had nothing to do with Donald Trump.

Taking this tweet at face value, it means that the president of the United States cannot conceive of reasons why schools and parents would not want to fill up the classrooms this fall -- unless it's to make him look bad. He is so self-centered that the idea that people don't want to die, or that schools don't want to risk their students or be liable for that risk. He can only conceive of how that reflects on him.

Let me be clear: I wouldn't be sending my son to school this fall even if it meant that going or not going could guarantee Joe Biden's presidential victory. Again: Our decision had nothing to do with Donald Trump. But Trump cannot understand a universe in which he is not the center, in which people make decisions based on their own interests instead of how it affects his. His narcissism has always been one of his most terrible qualities. Now it could be positively lethal.

We are keeping our kid home this fall

We officially made the decision this week: Our son -- a rising seventh grader -- will be learning from home this fall.

We don't love this decision. The boy is better at learning in a classroom setting than in digital, distanced-learning environment. He would love to see his friends again. But despite President Trump's constant pressure on schools to reopen, I'm just not comfortable that sending him back to school is the best decision -- for his health, for the health of anybody working at the school, or for us in his family.

And there's stuff like this:

An overnight summer camp in rural southwestern Missouri has seen scores of campers, counselors and staff infected with the coronavirus, the local health department revealed this week, raising questions about the ability to keep kids safe at what is a rite of childhood for many.

Missouri is one of several states to report outbreaks at summer camps. The Kanakuk camp near Branson ended up sending its teenage campers home. On Friday, the local health department announced 49 positive cases of the COVID-19 virus at the camp. By Monday, the number had jumped to 82.

I realize that keeping our son home is a privilege. His mom and I both do most of our work from home, anyway. And we have wifi, as well as a school district willing and able to provide online learning. Not everybody does. As I said in THE WEEK a few weeks back:

Parents understandably worry that lost classroom time means their kids will fall behind. Others may not have access to the technology needed for remote learning, or they may need the schools to provide meals to their children. More than a few parents need schools to reopen simply so they can have some daytime childcare. Nothing about this is easy. It will be a good day when schools can reopen safely.

But parents should be wary of risking their children's health to buttress the president's vanity and image. If schools reopen this fall, there is a good chance my child won't be in attendance.

Well, the choice is officially made.