Today I’ve mostly stayed at home. This afternoon I went to my aunt’s house to help her with a computer problem and borrow a card table, and this evening I went for a walk (exercise is good for your immune system), but that’s it. Otherwise I’ve been around the house. Eating. Reading. Eating some more. Ugh. Pandemics are stressful. As one of my friends lamented on the phone yesterday, “I’m going to gain weight. I’ve accepted it. It’s just going to happen.” Alas, there are so many things happening right now that we need to accept. That are so hard to accept.

If you don’t know what they are, turn on the news. Or check your bank account.

This afternoon, from home, from a distance, I spoke to my therapist. In terms of COVID-19, she said everyone’s life has been put ON PAUSE, that it’s clearly time for all of us to slow down, slow the fuck down. “I feel really sorry for people whose identities are wrapped up in being productive or being social for the wrong reasons [so they can post about themselves online],” she said. “They’re about to get a serious reality check.”

“Right,” I said, “because if your self-worth is centered around doing things, what happens when you can’t do them?”

This is a serious and valid question, one, I think, we’re all being given time to consider. Along these lines, my therapist referred to this time in history as “a gift.” Not because people are terrified, sick, and dying, but because our collective go, go, going has come to a serious halt. Perhaps because we haven’t been able to do it for ourselves, life has pumped the brakes for us. Consequently, we HAVE to slow down, gather around our families, search our interiors, and think about the things that really matter: life, death, what we prioritize, the way we treat each other. Of course, all of this is not only scary as shit, but also a lot to handle at once. My therapist said, “Everyone is real crazy right now. So when you go to the grocery store you have to be psychically prepared to walk into a wall of fear.” In other words, tits up. Life right now ain’t for sissies.

As if it ever was, is, or shall be.

Joseph Campbell tells a story with this moral. Something about how little baby turtles that are born on a beach come crawling out of their hatched eggs and head straight for the ocean. And not only are there the waves to deal with, but–bam! right off the bat–there are seagulls swooping down to eat them. So like, this planet isn’t for the faint at heart. You gotta be tough. But not too tough. Because you don’t want to become bitter. Ugh. This is the challenge that Jesus talked about. To be wise as serpents (look alive, little turtles!) and–at the same time–innocent as doves (don’t hate the seagulls for being seagulls; they know not what they do).

I borrowed the card table from my aunt’s today because I have some editing work to do this week. And whereas I’d normally go to the library to work, thanks to COVID-19 and social distancing, I now need to work from home. Me and the rest of the world. Alas, the only table or workstation we have here is our kitchen table, and that part of the house is way too noisy for concentrating. So I set the card table up in my room as a makeshift desk, and now my room, more than ever, has become my little corner of the globe. True, the card table bounces a little with every keystroke, but it doesn’t suck. Indeed, as I look around my room, I think, I like it here. It ain’t the library, but if I absolutely had to, I could get sick and die here, content.

Not that I want to die, and not that my chances of dying are high. But as I’ve said before, at some point you have to consider your own mortality and what you’re really all about. For me this looks like asking myself if I can find peace no matter what. When I’m being productive, when I’m lazing around. When I’m healthy, when I’m sick. When I’m being embraced by others, when I’m alone. This is no small task, of course, and is the undertaking of a lifetime. And yet I’m proud to report that significant progress can be made in a fairly short amount of time. Having sat down every day for almost the last three years with the express intention of meeting and coming to know myself, I’ve realized I actually like who I am. And that I don’t need anything out there to make me feel good in here. Sure, chocolate cake, a load of money, and a hot lover wouldn’t suck, but there are increasingly more days when, in the absence of all that, I’m totally elated. The mystics say this is the big cosmic joke, when you finally get that everything you thought was important isn’t. That you don’t need “a thing” to make you happy.

What? My bank account is empty, and there’s not a roll of toilet paper in sight?

Hilarious.