Covid-19 Part One

This before we were ordered to stay home.

Like many people these days, I listen to podcasts. But they don't hold my interest very long, not unless there's something to learn from them. My tastes lean to rabbis, and people who have done research. A rabbi who teaches in a university, one who doubles as a professor, well, it doesn't get any better than that. 

All that to tell to quote from a prodigious podcast: Rabbi Dovid Katz on Jewish History Rabbi Katz almost always prefaces his conclusions by saying, 

Hey, that's just my opinion. Seriously. Just my thoughts on the topic, the matter at hand, what we're talking about here. Really. You know what I mean? My opinion. You understand. It's just my thinking. 

In other words, take it with a grain of salt, form your own opinions. You're welcome to go elsewhere, consult another rabbi, another historian. 

So that's the caveat here, too. Just my opinion. 

nobody's swimming lately

  Today I went to the pool and guess what? Nobody there! Nobody. Except one woman singing in the locker room. She said that people had been there earlier, but now they're gone.

She sang well. She seemed happy. And I, too, leaving the facility an hour later, felt pretty happy walking home.

That was today. Yesterday, as the news breaks about the virus, mass hysteria, fear of contagion, pressure to flatten the curve. All this for a virus, FD is quick to tell me. It feels like gloom and doom, the world is coming to an end.  Any money we thought we had? CRASH!

Coping skills are the order of the day. And all I can think is, ignore, ignore, withdraw, retreat, go into emotional-mental quarantine. When people panic, be the best therapist you can be. Don't. And tell them,

Life goes on. Stay in the moment. Feel reality, feel the present. Love it.

That's it, that's the mantra. Live life as is. Don't focus on Covid-19, unless it is to somehow lift others up. Don't bring people down. Like most things we fear, the virus has much well-deserved power. But there will be an end to it.  (Again, my opinion, what do I know?)

A steady diet of attention to this thing will, no question, bring us down. And yet, there is no escaping that, most likely. We will have to attend to it, we will, and we will all commiserate. We are, for once in a century, all in the same emotional boat.

The object is to stay up. Rally whatever serotonin we can. Stretch.

Because for most of us, as the Beatles sang many years ago,

Oh blah di, o blah dah. Life goes on bra.  Al la la la life goes on. 

We have choices. We can stay in the moment, live our lives in some happy fashion, and connect with people electronically (because, no doubt, the pool will close). The moment is different for everyone, but it is our prerogative to stay here, to feel it. Or we can future trip and worry.

As the rabbi might say, Therefore, choose life.

But that's just my opinion.

therapydoc