The Camping Philosophy, Corona and Collective Grief

When I was growing up, my family went camping almost every weekend in the spring, summer and fall. We had a pop-up camper and my dad would drive from suburban Chicago to some small town in southern Wisconsin for the weekend. Sometimes we would go with other families in the neighborhood, other times it would be just the four of us and Clancy, our dog.

One thing I learned early on was the camping philosophy: when it is raining, everyone is wet so don't complain.

Does this apply to the pandemic? Who is allowed to complain? Everyone? No one? Is there a magical order of who gets to complain the most? Here is what I propose:

1. People who are sick and/or are dying of corona and are suffering alone.

These people get their own group, especially all of the people who died without their family present. 

Next...

1. Healthcare workers who are risking their own heath by caring for people with corona
2. People who lost their jobs because of social distancing requirements
3. People who should have been lost their jobs but didn't because their governor didn't implement social distancing so 640 out of 3,700 people at the meat packing plant where they work got corona and then their workplace became the current corona hotspot in the U.S.. Did I mention the factory is staffed with refugees who left war-torn countries where working in a plague ridden meat packing plant is better than their previous life?
4. People who have essential jobs--like grocery store worker, police officers and fire fighters--who  keep the world running in spite of the pandemic.
5. People who have to work from home (#me).

Am I allowed to complain even though I am at the bottom of the chain of misery?

Last night I was talking to some friends when I said "Maybe something good will come out of this, yet I can't wait to get back to normal life." As soon as I said that, I immediately regretted it. People are dying and others are losing their jobs. What good could come out of this?

Yet...maybe there could be something good. Maybe my working from home saved ten lives. Just me. Maybe collectively everyone who works from home in Seattle saved 10,000 lives. We might have reduced the burden on the healthcare system by a factor of ten. Governor Inslee sent back the mobile military hospital set up at CenturyLink field due to lack of need. Yay work-from-home workers! Seriously.

Tonight I was talking to my piano teacher and she said that her friend recommended treating this pandemic like it is an artist-in-residency program, which is interesting. While neither Karen or I will help make a vaccine, we might as well make the best of this time at home instead of freaking out. (We decided this after we spent an hour discussing how stressed we were, so I am not sure how successful we will be...)

Everyone is going through their own unique level of stress about the virus. I read a blog post about people who are not completely freaked out by the pandemic. People who recently had gone through another crisis were some of the least impacted. This aligned with a social media post from therapeutic boarding school mom: "I am not melting down as much as I thought I would about this pandemic. Am I normal? Am I the only one?" 

Nope, replied the crowd of families with kids in residential treatment.

A pandemic where you get to stay home and watch Netflix is relatively easy compared to taking care of teenager who has gone off the rails and you worry every night if they are going to die from drunk driving or are so depressed they might kill themselves. Nevertheless, the pandemic is still a crisis (when is a pandemic not a crisis?), even to those of us who have already been through a lot.

Which brings me to another point: I have gone through a decent amount of personal crises. I had a baby who died, my brother has schizophrenia, I tore my ACL (small potatoes, really), and my son is in residential treatment for anxiety and depression. Yet, each of those was more or less an individual or personal crisis. I had stable, grounded friends who weren't going through a crisis at the same time who could support me.

The pandemic is different: we all are going through this together. Everyone. Everyone's life has been disrupted, impacted. Our friends who we normally turn to are also suffering. We can't hug our friends. We can't go to lunch. We can't relax at dinner or at a movie, concert, play or ballet. Even my friends who are home with their family are struggling. I've spent hours on the phone with my dear friend Leslie. She is an effervescent sales woman stuck at home with her husband, three sons, and no nanny. When I talk to her, and I am reminded of Jean-Paul Sartre's famous line from No Exit: L'enfer, c'est les autres, or in English, "Hell is other people."

We are stuck.

I was reading the newspaper and I read an article by David Brooks. He asked readers about their mental states. He didn't know what to expect, "maybe some jaunty stories about families pulling together," like The Brady Bunch had a corona episode. What he got was gut-wrenching, like reading about widowed senior citizens isolated because their family doesn't want to contaminate them.

What I liked best about the article was the end: "I’m reminded that this is a time to practice aggressive friendship with each other — to be the one who seeks out the lonely and the troubled."

This is interesting advice, but aren't all of us in this pandemic lonely and troubled? Who isn't? Just like when rains when camping, everyone is wet. Maybe Brooks advice should be the other way around: Are you lonely and troubled? Practice aggressive friendship with each other.