Well. Here we are. Smack dab in the middle of some never-before-seen situations. Schools are closed for a few weeks, colleges are closed and moving online, several of my favorite places to go for a coffee have shut down, heck – Broadway has closed. Broadway! As much as we all know it is for the greater good, it’s a freaky thing to see and leaves us all feeling more than just a little on edge.
Brunswick resident Heather D. Martin wants to know what’s on your mind; email her at heather@heatherdmartin.com.
None of us really know what will happen next. We are anxious about the virus itself, and anxious about its impact upon our jobs, our families, our communities.
I’d started out this week writing a rip snorting attack on the flawed and feeble thinking in the federal government that rendered us so ill prepared to tackle a pandemic. It felt cathartic, and don’t think for one second that come November I will forget the current administration’s defunding of the CDC or the shutdown of international offices established to track exactly this kind of outbreak.
The thing is, I found myself continuously distracted, not by the latest display of incompetence (there are so many), but by the absolute glorious response to the crisis by everyday people.
The first distraction came in the form of all the funny memes that popped up splicing song lyrics with CDC advisories. You know the ones, things like Neil Diamond’s “hands, touching hands…” with the CDC begging for no touching. Yes, I know, it’s silly and trite, but it amused me and reminded me that even in the face of scary stuff, or maybe especially in the face of scary stuff, we have the ability to chuckle. I think that’s actually really important.
In his retirement farewell, RadioLab’s co-host Robert Krulwich, a veteran news man who has seen some scary stuff in his day, spoke about this idea: “Yes, there might be something wrong you need to know, or scary that you need to deal with, or something that makes you angry that you need to confront, but it seems to me that the thing that most people … they like to hear all those feelings translated into an ‘Oh, no,’ and then to a small, quiet grab of the hand, like, under the table, like ‘It’s OK, or, ‘We’ll do this together. ‘… laughter is such an enormously powerful part of that.”
So I am grateful for that.
I think there is another element to it as well. When we are just straight up seriously scared we become brittle. Our bodies reflect our minds and we lock into place. This not only feels lousy, it is not particularly useful. We can’t act, react, or help others if we can barely move. Laughter limbers us up. It shakes loose our muscles and frees us to more clearly scan the horizon for what is coming, and what is needed. We become more fluid, we become more capable.
And so, we bend to the task of keeping our community connected even as we distance, of remaining kind, of remaining present and honest, of facing this new situation even as it changes moment to moment with as much grace and chuckling as we can muster. This is me, giving your hand a squeeze under the table and saying, “It is OK. We will do this together.”
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