Calmly Engaged

I haven’t written in a while (other than grad school papers).  Life has been a little hectic, as it is for many right now.  But I know that writing is important for me anytime I am dealing with something stressful.  It’s a processing tool.  So, here goes.  The world is a strange place to be these days.  I started out 2020 with these grand plans of what an amazing year it was going to be.  And in many ways it has been, but I would never have imagined that 3 months in we would find ourselves facing the worst pandemic in 100 years and sequestered to our homes to ride it out.  I have gone through the gamut of feelings over the past few weeks – anxiety, sadness, gratitude, calm, fear, joy – you name it.  The first week in quarantine I was so anxious that I could barely eat.  This week I felt calm and got a little too fast and loose with my eating (“Kids, let’s make cookies again!”).  I mean, honestly, what else are we going to do after we finish school for the day?  Before this pandemic started, I felt like a had a very small margin of error in my life with everything I am juggling.  Even something like one of the kids having a sick day would put me behind.  Now my margin of error is in the negative digits.  Managing school for four kids at home, working remotely doing teletherapy with clients, and staying caught up on grad school is no small feat.  But at the same time, I am so grateful for the wonderful home that we have, the time we have had together, and the fact that we are currently healthy and have everything we need.  It is so sad that Wyatt is missing baseball season, Ty and Ansley are missing track season, Brinley may not have Kindergarten graduation, the list goes on and on.  But we are learning something about slowing down and not always being in a hurry to get somewhere, and for that I am grateful.  However, if this thing goes on for months, you may find me rocking in a corner somewhere and crying.  Haha.    

So that was a long intro, but here is what I really want to write about today.  I had a conversation with co-workers today (thank you God for Zoom!) where we talked about helping people find the space between panic and not caring.  And that concept has been on my mind all day.  I’ve been trying to decide what to call that space, and I think the best term I can come up with is “calmly engaged”.  Finding that space is a real challenge for most of us, and here is why I think that is the case.  Panic allows a person to live in the illusion that they have control over the situation.  For instance, with this pandemic, if you are panicked about catching it, you will become fanatic about making sure you don’t catch it.  You will judge all your friends who go buy groceries, but secretly buy all the toilet paper on amazon.  You will believe that no person is safe.  Every person that walks down your street is a threat.  You will believe you can’t touch anything.  You will watch the news around the clock so that you can have every last piece of information so that you can STAY IN CONTROL.  Panic is to some extent a function of the ego and a way to delude oneself into believing that you have more power than you actually have. 

On the other extreme, you have not caring.  What happens with not caring is you convince yourself that you have no control, so you give up.  What this looks like in this pandemic is a person refusing to make smart choices to protect self and others.  It looks like coughing on your roommate or having the whole neighborhood over for a bonfire.  It looks like pretending nothing is happening and everyone who cares is ridiculous.  Not caring is a form of defeat.  Instead of allowing yourself to feel any anxiety, you withdraw from responsibility.  One common defense of this attitude is “God is in control.  There is nothing I can do.  He has already decided what will happen to me.”  And so, you ignore science and data and the people who are begging you to be smart.  Because, well, you just don’t care. 

Being calmly engaged in the middle of these two extremes is difficult, and here is why.  When you are calmly engaged you have to admit two things: I am personally responsible for the decisions I make, AND I ultimately don’t control outcomes.  This is a hard place to live because here you have to be diligent and smart and remain engaged and CARE, but you have no guarantees that any of your efforts are going to pay off in the end.  It is the ultimate gamble.  And yet, this is where healthy people live.  Responsibility meets trusting in something bigger.  Fear can live here, and the calmly engaged person can talk about that fear and move through it.  This is a scary place to be – personally responsible with relatively little control.  But as it relates to this pandemic, and as it relates to life in general, this is where we need to be.  This is where we can breathe.  This is where we are the best neighbors and friends and family members.  This is where we thrive.  This is where societies take care of their people.  The ego quiets down.  The best self steps forward.  This looks like loving well.  And it looks like holding space for when things don’t go the way you planned.  This is an open-hearted way of living that both accepts that you really matter in the grand scheme of things and that you are also small in the grand scheme of things.  Here you rely on God to be ultimately in control, while you do the absolute best you can with what he has given you.  This is being calmly engaged. 

So, as we move through this strange period that is unlike anything we have ever experienced or would have seen coming, remaining calmly engaged is key.  Anxiety is bound to come.  Hard times are here for a lot of people.  None of this is easy.  So, when you feel panic setting in or you feel yourself losing the ability to care anymore, reach out to someone.  Having healthy and loving relationships helps us remain calmly engaged.  We have an opportunity in this mess to love people better than we ever have before.  We have the chance to think about what is important to us and who is important to us.  We can pull one another back to the center when we feel like we are slipping into the extremes.  We can get through this together.  And when we finally get to have cookouts and bonfires and birthday parties and ballgames and playdates and church and school again, we will all be so grateful for the everyday things in our lives that we have so dearly missed.