March 27, 2020
I almost wrote 2019 so I guess you could say I'm thriving
I’ve been thinking about a lot of things right now, how the world as an entity is going to survive, how all the people are going to keep going after the worst of this pandemic passes, how I personally am going to move on with my career and my relationships and my existence as a human being. I sometimes feel selfish for caring about myself as an individual but then, isn’t obsessing about whether or not I’m selfish or suitably performatively generous an act of selfishness in itself? It seems like it’d be better if I just acknowledged my supposedly immature and selfish and petty feelings and let myself experience them and then move on and give the world at large my unfocused attention instead of attempting to do the latter while inadvertently allowing my own issues to consume me. In other words, I’m not sure where the line is between being too navel-gazing and not navel-gazing enough but by and large, I’m just trying to keep it all in perspective.
Leslie Jamison, one of my favorite writers, was diagnosed with Coronavirus and she’s quarantining at home alone with her toddler and she wrote in the New York Times today:
“These days I usually dream about nice dinner parties I wasn’t invited to. Romanticizing other peoples’ quarantines is just the latest update of an ancient habit. So what if I signed divorce papers a month before the city went on lockdown? I’ve got my blankets. I’ve got my toddler pouring shards of pita chips down the neck of her rainbow llama pajamas, right here in the epicenter of the epidemic. Sure, I sometimes wish my quarantine was another quarantine, and I sometimes wish my marriage had been another marriage, but when have I ever lived inside my own life without that restlessness? It’s an ache in the muscles that makes it hard to lie still. Quarantine teaches me what I’ve already been taught, but I’ll never learn—that there are so many other ways to be lonely besides the particular way I am lonely.”
Like Jamison, I too am thinking about how we as individuals can negotiate the boundaries between acknowledging our privilege and acknowledging our pain. I wish there was some kind of clear cut line at what we’re allowed to complain about and what we’re not allowed to complain about. That video of all those celebrities singing along to John Lennon’s “Imagine” in their sunshiney mansions is cringeworthy but I also wonder at whether it’s actually worth an iota to be tweeting snide comments about it. That action also feels performative in its own way but then maybe everything is performative, which yes, I’m aware is probably a cop-out to say.
That being said, I am still leaving the house to go to work and I’ve even been given a letter to carry around by my employer that ensures I don’t get in trouble for being outside if I’m stopped by a police officer when out and about. It feels somewhat unfair that I still have to work and without even a mask at that but nonetheless, I’m aware that I’m among the lucky few who has as much space as I do to loll about during my time off. While I am not working, I do my part to stay at home but I still feel like it’s not enough. I have donated a few hundred dollars to Feeding America since the food banks were practically begging for monetary donations on NPR and since I heard (also on NPR) that there are 36 million people in Mexico who don’t have access clean water (you can’t wash your hands for at least 20 seconds if you don’t have the water for which to do so!), I donated $100 to Charity Water as well, which brings clean water to people in need all over the world. I’m sure there are other organizations to donate to and if anybody knows any that really need the help, I’ll do what I can to boost and donate to them. But currently, it’s most likely safer for you to donate money rather than time because of the risk of contamination especially if you’ve been quarantining thus far so keep that in mind.