As we enter the third week of somewhat intense lockdown, I was reflecting on the first two weeks and realizing (as I suppose many others are) that I am not well made for this. I hear of people on Facebook and elsewhere who are reveling in the time and solitude, and though I have always enjoyed my space, I find myself counting hours by minutes and looking for ANY excuse to leave the house (if you need me to do your shopping, call. If you want me to stand in line at the DMV…). I think this is mainly because I lack two fundamental characteristics that are most needed to manage this time, patience and the ability to give up control.
I am not a particularly patient person. To quote Carrie Fischer’s book, Postcards from the Edge, “Instant gratification takes too long.” Now, to be clear, I’m not particularly impatient with people (some may disagree) or situations, only with time. I hate waiting, a fault which is compounded by the unknown. Tell me you are going to be five, or fifteen, or an hour late, and I’m generally fine, but make me wait for even a short time and I’m going nuts. COVID-19 is like the most annoying late person ever. No authority, with the exception of your President, is making any true predictions for how long we will be home bound, and all we can do is wait. Without being able to set our internal clocks for a release date, the wait seems unending.
To call me a control freak, would probably be a disservice…to control freaks. I like to know where every aspect of my life is at any moment, and I want things to go the way I want them to go. Uncertainty is great, as long as you tell me how much there is going to be and exactly how long it will last. Oddly, my life hasn’t been particularly orderly in the last few years, but this has not made me less of a control freak, just a stressed out control freak. Even more than patience, the lack of real control in my life during this time has made me want to peal the skin off my face. In efforts to remain in control, I set up order to my day, to what I eat, to exercise, to work, but these only hide the terrifying things which I cannot control.
Of course in reality all of life is waiting and we have surprisingly little control over any of it. In our day to day “normal” lives we can’t control other people or circumstances (as much as we may try), and so much of life is about waiting an indeterminate time for something to happen, or not. I believe that the abrupt massive constriction of our lives in the face of a merciless indiscriminate virus makes us more aware of how powerless we are.
I hope that this time may end soon, but it’s not in my (shaking) hands.
Be safe, be strong!