COVID19 in-house Day 45: Grateful for X

I started a gratitude alphabet but I'm starting from the end of the alphabet and moving up towards the beginning. It seemed like a good idea in these topsy-turvy times.

Today's gratitude letter is "X".

What is X? X is all those times when you felt bad. The missed opportunities, the broken promises, the betrayals, the words said in anger, the lost friend, the sick child, the lies, the fear, the sneer and the disdain.

Oh, what? Why am I grateful for all these things?

Let me turn that around and ask: would I only be grateful for the "good" things? Should I only be grateful for the things that make me happy? The things that feel nice? 

Or is being grateful a state of mind and a quality of spirit that endures, anyway. In qualunque momento e ovunque. Anytime, anywhere. Because, fundamentally, being grateful implies that you are aware that there is a world that's bigger than you can know, and you are grateful for that world, and open to its possibilities, to the extent that you admit that although sometimes the possibilities are manifest in an unpleasant or downright horrific and traumatic way, you decide to remain open, and to remain grateful.

Grateful for X means that I accept that awful and horrible things can happen in my life, or I can witness those things happening in the lives of others, and I don't have to either pretend they're not happening, or allow those things to destroy my belief in the power of love. 

No, I'm not talking about "everything happens for a reason." Reason has nothing to do with it. People with an intense, firmly rooted religious life might be able to believe that everything that happens to them is part of God's plan. This isn't a reasonable choice, that is, it isn't based on reason: it's a choice based on faith. You decide to have faith, and then you just have it, come what may.

It's the same with gratitude. Like a long marriage, I'm not going to only stay with my spouse when things are fun, sexy, and fulfilling. I'll also stick around when my spouse is acting badly (I'm not talking about actual abuse here), has the flu, gets old, or is having a life crisis. I will decide to be grateful, and then I'll just be grateful. I'm not only going to be grateful for the good, wonderful, fulfilling things that I receive. I have to be grateful for the whole bundle, or my gratitude isn't worth anything at all.

How do we continue to be grateful in these difficult times? I'm disturbed today. It's pouring out, so the streets are empty which means I can go for my 8 k run, so I'm grateful that I can run. But I have things on my mind: a friend lost her child last week - why? Why should someone who escaped persecution and death in Syria, who fled through Turkey, survived the rubber dinghy ride over to Greece, survived the camps, .... then lose a child in his sleep? I can worry endlessly about my kids for various valid and not valid reasons. I worry about my running buddy who is recovering from chemo. Of course, there's this virus out there that is not a hoax or a conspiracy, but is actually a dangerously infectious virus that can kill people. There's another thing to torment me.  I'm worried about my business: when can we open? How will we open? How will I hear what people are saying if they're wearing masks? (I'm a little hard of hearing and often rely on lips).

But I HAVE to be grateful. For the good things, and for the snakes and toads. 

Grateful for the flaws, the dark patches, the cracks, the scars. Grateful for lessons. Grateful for the black crow, glasses too full, mysteries. 

COVID19 in-house Day 2: We Are One

When my youngest was maybe four years old, that meant I also had a six, nine, and eleven year old, we lived on a farm. Some would call it paradise: we lived in a beautiful old stone house, with a wood stove, terracotta floors, and a view of the fields and a huge old oak tree and a big cherry tree. We had a duck pond, with ducks and geese, and hens, a vineyard, a huge vegetable garden, a dog and a cat. We ate food from our own land, drank wine from our vineyard. I would walk down the path about 50 meters and carry 18 litre jerry cans of drinking water back to the house from the spring. On the down side, it was a project that involved a hell of a lot of work, and time and energy, without any financial reward, so we were pretty tired by the end of each day. It was a good, healthy, solid life.

One fall, my oldest came home from school with a bad case of head lice. Back in those days, in Italy, you didn't get the sucky letters from the school about how to treat it and how to isolate or whatever. You just dealt with it. Two of our family of six didn't get them. My husband clearly was not on their menu, and one of my sons. But I did, and all three of the other kids did. I have long curly hair, and my youngest did back then as well.

For a while, I tried to treat us individually. I used separate everything, I got all stressed about isolating, hard when they all slept in the same room. I carefully did all the things you're supposed to do. Nothing. The insect world was clearly winning.

Then one day, well into the winter, I realized that I was going about it all wrong. This was a case of the insect world against the human world! If I killed a louse on one head, the rest of them would just move to another head! I needed to look at the family as a whole, and engage in all-out, across the board battle against these creatures.

I went back to one hairbrush. I washed all the laundry together in hot water and hung it out for 24 hours. The brothers went back to rough-and-tumbling together with their heads touching. I reduced my intense stress and anxiety. I continued intensive hair washing and cleaning but smaller brothers bathed together as before.

I was victorious! By realizing that we were one, by reducing my anxiety and concentrating on the matter at hand, and by lessening useless restrictions on having fun, I finally managed to vanquish these tiny creatures who were making our collective life miserable.

Ya, so? COVID19 is a killer virus, not just an embarrassing insect. True. Even more reason to look at how we are reacting to the crisis, and to understand better what our most effective tactics might be.  I'm not an epidemiologist, although I've been saying for a few years now that if reincarnation is a thing, then I'd love to become one next time around. But then again, I probably won't remember or I'll be a squirrel. What I have understood, though, is that the more people stay at home and limit their contacts with others, the less people will get infected all at once, which will lessen the global severity of the pandemic. So, if I'm staying at home with my family, there are five of us here. If we all get it, or if we all have it already, we are staying home and not infecting anyone else. If we all go out because we feel great, then that number of possibly infected people grows exponentially. And a certain percentage of those people will need medical care. So the more people out and about, the more really sick people will crowd the hospitals.

If we all stay home, the infection stays home too. The number of new infections is reduced, and the hospitals and health care workers can better manage the load. If we look at Italy as our example of what not to do, their population and their government ignored this simple rule for far too long, and so the virus spread like wildfire. We need to recognize that every single one of us is part of a bigger whole. I'm staying home, my kids are staying home, I hope you are staying home too.

And if you're not staying home because you're a health care worker, or part of our essential services, then thank you! Stay safe, stay healthy, stay happy.

Stay happy? I'm not actually an extrovert. I think I may be a little Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I do love people, I love a party, I love chatting with people, I love running my cafe and making jokes and finding out about peoples' lives. But damn! Give me the four hour solitude of a long Sunday run! Put me in the mountains on my own and let me wander! Leave me at home alone for days on end! I do appreciate my own company as well.

Yesterday was a challenge. I got up early to have a little alone time, which was fabulous, except I wasted a large part of it on my phone looking at funny covid memes. Then the day just blistered by. We had a mid day crisis when my nephew was trying to decide if he should drive back home with friends (long car ride, not a good idea). The day filled up with worry and anxiety. I spoke to two friends who are over 70 and in isolation. My family is around the world and I miss them. What's going to happen? I felt out of control and extremely worried. What the hell? My cafe that I worked so hard for, stricken down by a fucking VIRUS? Where do we draw the line with our social isolation rules? Can we go to the workplace to pick stuff up? Use the copy machine? Can we go buy booze? Can my son visit his girlfriend? Damn, I don't know...

Good Stuff
So, I did intervals yesterday. My fastest pace was 4:34. Ha! Getting fitter at least... I am planning  a virtual book club. I sent some money to a friend in Greece working with the migrants. I kept my shit together.

Love you all!