Bright Spots (Lockdown progress report for April 4, 2020)

Total words: 0 (getting a late start today!)
Manuscript total: 12,832

Yesterday, I had a lockdown first: I was so busy all day long that I forgot to blog! Between class in the morning (which ended with a delightful conversation about mullets, led by our professor), to social engagements (from six feet away) in the afternoon, to going to a virtual event with one of my favorite authors, N.K. Jemisin, in the evening, I didn’t even think about blogging until I was lying in bed at about 9pm. By then, however, I just figured everyone would survive a day without a blog post from me.

So did you survive? Yes? Okay, good. 🙂

Today I’m trying to accentuate the positive.

I spent my last post ranting about how angry I am with the United States federal government, and while that’s still true, I’m also completely aware that dwelling upon it is not good for my mental health and doesn’t change anything anyway. Instead, I’m looking for positive things to focus on today.

For starters, the self is impermanent, and each day (moment) is a chance to start again.

I took a long walk with my friend K yesterday afternoon, and they struggle with their depression and anxiety under the very best of circumstances. Like many others, right now is an especially hard time for them. They expressed to me that the worst thought was that they would wake up tomorrow morning and it everything was going to be just as $#!tty as it was today, including their mood.

I laid some wisdom on K from my Buddhist years that I still find true and useful, and that is that all produced phenomena are impermanent, and therefore changing in every moment — including the self.

Here’s how it works. Anything that is produced (anything that exists because it was created by a collection of causes) is not permanent. A tree, for example, is a collection of causes like sunlight, water, a seed, climate, etc. When one of those causes changes, like water, then the tree changes. And besides that, the tree is changing in every moment anyway.

The self isn’t any different from the tree. It, too, is naught but a collection of causes — our biology, our background, our culture, our day-to-day experiences. As the causes creating the self change (and they are changing all the time), the self necessarily also changes. And in order for anything to change, its previous iteration must perish. In other words, if my self of moment 2 is different from my self of moment 1, then my self of moment 1 is necessarily gone in order for the self of moment 2 to exist.

Therefore, it is completely valid to quote Scarlet O’Hare and declare,

“After all, tomorrow IS another day.”

Indeed, each day is a new day, a new opportunity, a new self. Each day is a chance to have a different experience than we had the day before.

K reported that this was helpful to think about. I hope it will be helpful for you, too.

In the midst of bad things, good things are still happening.

In addition to holding to the bit of Buddhist philosophy cited above, I’m also choosing to focus on gratitude for the following good things that are happening at the moment:

1. On Thursday, I got my edTPA scores back, and I passed! I didn’t get AMAZING scores, and for the overachiever in me, that was hard. But damn, I passed, I don’t have to retake any sections, and that is something to be grateful for.
2. All my loved ones are still healthy. One of the things that got me down the other day was reading about how the American South is scheduled to be the next hotspot for the pandemic. That’s scary for me, since I’m a southerner and most of my people are there, including my aging parents. But instead of focusing on that, I’m going to focus on the incredible fact that, at least for the time being, everyone I hold dear is still healthy.
3. In California, our leaders seem to be successfully flattening the curve. I’m impressed that, thanks to the early actions of Governor Gavin Newsom, the pandemic isn’t progressing too quickly here. It doesn’t mean we’re in the clear, but I am grateful for intelligent state leadership.
4. So many humans are being excellent to each other. I have recently developed an addiction to the soothing tones of Judy Woodruff on PBS Newshour, and this morning I was watching a segment on all the doctors coming out of retirement to help with the pandemic, along with the medical students who have been graduated early from their programs so that they can jump onto the front lines. Between the heroism of medical professionals to people standing on their porches or balconies to cheer at precisely 8pm, to people leading Zumba classes in front yards for their neighbors or delivering meals instead of newspapers to the elderly, there is just an outpouring of human kindness that’s happening right now. It’s touching and impressive, and something that can reaffirm our sense of hope in this grim situation.

Keep being excellent to one another.

In the words of the great Bill and Ted, keep being excellent to each other and party on. Until tomorrow, this is Judy Woodruff… wait, no. Until tomorrow, this is the self I currently am in this moment, who is making an effort to stay positive, signing off.