I MOURN! I MOURN!

 

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

 

Lately it is hard to get out of bed in the morning, or out of the recliner during the day. This 65+ chronicler with underlying health conditions is familiar with this reality all too well. I know it is the same for many of you—you tell me it is so in your social media posts and phone calls. How could it be any other way? Even before the pandemic, loss was ever a part of our existence. But before the pandemic, we had ways of coping, methods we developed over the course of our experiences, approaches that allowed us some measure of control. We had tried and true actions, as well as psychological and spiritual tactics; we had church-buddies, and/or sports-buddies, and/or gym-buddies, and/or work-buddies, and/or buddies in other walks of life—we had work, hobbies, medications—we had parents, siblings, daughters, sons, grandchildren—we had people, people who wrapped us in their arms and made it all okay. But we don’t have access to our tactics anymore because there is an enemy out there that is impervious to the psychotherapist’s couch and the church’s pew. This enemy will snuff us out as readily in those hideouts as anywhere else. And worse, we don’t have our people anymore. If we know what’s good for our health and/or longevity, you, they, I, we, all of us now live in our separate cells of solitary confinement. It is a known fact that human beings do not do well for long periods without hugs whether of the physical, emotional, or spiritual kind. I haven’t had a physical hug from anyone, not from my children and grandchildren, or my sister and other family members, or from friends since the first week in March. That’s five whole months. Unless I am a sociopath, the disconnection makes for wretched days and questionable futures.

 

On the other hand, there are “essential workers” who would give their right arm for the privilege of riding out the pandemic, home alone, parked and with their feet hiked up in a cushy recliner. Foregoing hugs would be a nominal sacrifice for the assurance of protecting ones self and ones children and spouse and other loved-ones from the virus that they might bring home to them. The awful truth is that no-one is untouched by our current reality.      

 

On top of the loss of our tricks of behavior and of our people, we’ve lost our way of life and we don’t know if we’ll ever get it back; or if and when we do get it back, if we’ll like what we get—for it will be different. And the infuriating thing is that none of this is of our own choosing. It is now and will be then a thing thrust upon us, and independent Americans do not like having things thrust upon them. Below our sadness and loneliness is a boiling anger at such injustice. How dare this thing do this to us! We are Americans! This kind of thing does not happen to Americans! We have been taught that we can be and do anything we make up our minds to be and do. We’ve worked hard, kept our noses to the grindstone, did all the right things—we’ve spent our lifetimes creating our unique, beautiful, and wonderful selves—and now what? What do you mean that we have to wear masks? Can it really come down to these rules, to this emptiness—this uncertainty in this world that now lends little or even no credence at all to our desires and dreams? How unfair!

 

But then again, isn’t it about time that we Americans grow out of our tendency toward magical thinking? Life is not Disneyland; Pollyanna’s message is a dangerous one for our well-being.©

Linda Lee Greene's books are available for purchase at Amazon.com. 

 

LESSONS OF THE THREE A.M. HOUR©

LESSONS OF THE THREE A.M. HOUR©

By Linda Lee Greene, January 7, 2019

The three o’clock hour bewitched me again this night and pulled me awake. There are mystic presences in that middle-of-the-night-niche, charismas impatient to whisper secrets in my ear, or if not secrets exactly, Universal truths they wish me to contemplate that are too often shrouded in humanity’s repressive tendencies.

Floating on ethers deceptively soft and silky came the urgent word “responsibility.” I retaliated by stating under my breath that responsibility is a clear and obvious human principle. You and I exercise it all the time. We’ve got that one down pat. But these phantoms who visit me during the night don’t deal with the commonplace—their purpose is to challenge me to think beyond the familiar implication of things. I began by asking Google for the definition of the word. Google’s response was that “responsibility is the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something or of having control over someone.” I understood that these few words held within themselves only a hint of what my middle-of-the-night-messengers wished to convey to me—so I searched further. I found it in a chapter titled “Responsibility” in a remarkable book I read initially a year or so ago and have been leafing through casually again in the last few days. Apparently, the theme of the chapter has stayed with me unconsciously. HOLINESS is the name of the book, written by the deceased British historian, theologian, and spirituality writer Donald Nicholl.

Nicholl hits on several key issues in the chapter, all of them addressed from a spiritual point of view. For instance in his discussion about one of the ways we use our tongues, he says on page 69, “…We are responsible for every single word that we utter with our tongues; and if we utter bitter words we not only harm others, we also harm our own bodies. Our bitterness produces chemical changes in our bodies that harm them; and if bitter speech is continually repeated, the body will eventually declare itself diseased as a form of protest.”

            Hurtful, bitter words are too often the accepted and/or ignored pattern in today’s world. I worry that the practice of it will manifest as a pandemic of disease and kill off a generation or more of us before our times.   

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