Many of us are experiencing a feeling that seems both strangely familiar and unnervingly odd.
And yet we can't quite put a finger to it.
I think what many of us are experiencing is grief. Anxiety, of course, that's normal, but I think on the fringes of our fear is a halo of grief.
At night, I often feel sick. But I feel better in the morning. I think my sickness at night is grief. It is the cold that I feel deep into my bones, and gives me chills. (Which I often think as symptom of Covid19, that's how paranoid I am.)
When I wake up and part the curtains so I can see the early morning sky, the grip that tightens around my heart is grief. The great blue sky to me is the beach, the outdoors, the expanse of clouds outside the window of my plane. And what eats me up is that many of us may never experience those simple joys ever again
But how can we grieve, what right do we have to grieve, especially if we haven't even lost someone? Or that we have a roof over our heads, food on our tables?
We know grief as a burning, dark, heavy sensation that eats up our entire being, but that's because the grief that we know is often associated with death, something final, a period, the end.
How can we grieve with such an open ended situation like the Covid-19 pandemic? And so we keep grief at bay. And it comes out in many ways. Anger, guilt, bitchiness, laziness, sense of futility.
Everyone throws around the words "the new normal" like it's just a process or a government regulation but until we find a vaccine that's cheap and easily available for the entire world, the new normal means living in a world where you can survive, but definitely not thrive. Where you are confined inside boxes, or where human contact is limited, where travel is impossible, where you are scurrying to and between places, head always down.
In short, all the joys we once took for granted. Is this the kind of future we want? Right now, it seems to be the only future available.
People will tell you, Your grief is not valid because there are more people suffering. Or you're lucky to be alive. Or you're lucky to have a job, anyway. Or check your entitlement.
They don't allow you to grieve. They don't want you to take a pause. They want you to go on about your daily life, to go on as if nothing happened, as if this is just a blip and a mere footnote in our history--because not to go on is to be weak.
But for your sake, and for the world's sake, you are allowed to grieve not just for humanity, not just for heroes who died, not just for the sick, but for yourself and for time you feel you cannot take back, these months and days that blend into each other, the people you miss, the routine you need to feel whole and now every single day is a yawning abyss.
You are entitled to grieve. You are entitled to cope with it in a way you know how. Especially in the first week, in the first month, as we all navigate uncharted territory.
You are allowed to fumble and feel lost. You are not expected to carry the wisdom of your forefathers before you in handling something as painful as this pandemic. You are allowed to feel like you're struggling. You are allowed to fail in living something as mundane as your everyday existence.
But you are also required to do what humans have done in history---you have to learn how to live the best way you know how, because our faith will tell you that things will get better. We are alive now because we believe in the propensity of things always getting better. Humanity is about standing on the shoulders of those who've come before us, and this pandemic is our test as a generation. Our survival--and the survival of the future generation--depends on our ability to follow rules now, ability to respect authority, and yes, ability to get ahold of ourselves.
Allow yourself to grieve, and then, when you're done, live.