Love, Beauty, and Goofiness in the Time of Coronavirus

Somehow the coronavirus has cured any writer’s block I’ve had over the past year. You will have to decide for yourself whether that is a good thing.

Just about a year ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was one of the lucky ones, a lumpectomy, actually two surgeries, since the first didn’t get clear margins, followed by a bad infection that landed me in the emergency room, followed by twenty-three radiation treatments and a lot of fatigue. But I eventually made a full recovery and returned to normal activities. At that point I thought a lot about writing on thoughts of

But I didn’t write. Instead, I self-imposed a new test for publishing my musings—Do I have anything to say that hasn’t already been said, and probably better?  By that standard, the answer always seemed to be “no”.

 Now, I have another reason to feel grateful and lucky—that my diagnosis and medical treatments did not occur during a pandemic. I’ve also found my writer’s block “cured”, and not just because I have more free time on my hands. Truth be told, as a retired person, I have plenty of free time.

But now I again feel the need to share the thoughts rambling around in my head. Ordinarily, those thoughts do nothing but ping from one side of my brain to another. Maybe some come out in conversations. But a lot of them are lost into my synapses that comprise my increasingly short-term memory.  

Perhaps my so-called insights with a mix of goofiness do not seem to be too excessively represented in the things I read. Or maybe I need to write based on my need to connect.  Or maybe it's a little of both.

Today I listened to the New Yorker podcast, “How Humanity Survives Pandemics” where they discussed the natural human desire to connect. We are a social species. One reporter said she’d received more phone calls in the last week than she had in the last year, some calls from friends she had not spoken to in a year.

 

Recently, I also called and emailed friends and relatives I hadn’t been in contact with for a while, thinking to myself it would be good to check on them. Such calls and emails probably are at least as good for me as for them.  

 

I love to see friends and even acquaintances in large, happy gatherings. Such gatherings energize me. I also love small gatherings like dinners or movie nights with friends or family. Those types of groups give me a warm energy as well. But I also love spending time at home with just my spouse and dog. I think those times restore my energy levels.

I’m pretty sure I would not love being alone without a spouse, friend, or pet. I hope I do not have to find out what it is like to be completely alone. That’s one of the aspects of this pandemic that seems the worst.  

Dying from a disease like the coronavirus must be awful but perhaps not among the absolute worst ways to die.

 

Optional diversionary goofiness—compete online, by social media or other ways, to see who can come up with the most more awful ways to die. I have to give acknowledgement to my granddaughter for this particular goofiness diversion. She seems to have inherited a dark sense of humor from someone or several someones in the family. 

Back to what in my opinion makes this highly contagious virus particularly awful are the stories of people dying in isolation without the contact of loved ones to comfort them. Also, with funerals cancelled for the same reason, survivors cannot share hugs and tears of comfort.  

I’ve seen the recommendations for self-quarantine for those infected—no close contact with family or other household members. My spouse and I would both be able to follow those instructions if needed to keep the other safe. Our collie dog, not so much. She has no sense of social distancing. And as social a species humanity may be, some canines are even more so. I hope that is not a bridge we need to cross.  

The same New Yorker podcast mentioned some of the remarkable ways people have taken to lift their and other’s spirits in these difficult times: In China and Italy, group singing from balconies (ah, to be non-infected and on stay-at-home orders in an Italian neighborhood of opera singers). In Iran, doctors and nurses of both genders, after donning full-protective-coronavirus-battle array, dancing together, an activity normally forbidden by the Ayatollah.  

I think you can mark all of these activities in the “goofiness” category. But in a very good way in a time sorely in need of goofiness.  So, adapted from the WWII British motto, I propose a new slogan:

Keep Calm and Carry-On but Go for Some Love, Beauty and Goofiness.