day four, and our patience is wearing thin

Hi,

Ok, so now it’s day four of this blog series and day six of my family’s decision to “Shelter in Place.” Can hardly wait to make it one whole week: that’s pretty much all I’ve got on my calendar for tomorrow. LOL.

This cartoon by Clay Jones, from The Week pretty much sums up family relations across the country.  (Unless you’ve got kids at home. We’ve got a Millennial in the house too, and he’s been known to reply to our wise comments with an eye-roll and mumbled, “OK Boomer.”  The nerve!)

To make this state of anxiety more palatable, here’s a fine quote reminding us of how long it takes for humans to find enlightenment, or that is, freedom from ignorance:

“I continue to think that this task requires work on our limits, that is, a patient labor giving form to our impatience for liberty.”*

A patient labor may make patience less laborious.  It’s worth a try.

Sigh,

see you tomorrow.

 

*Michel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” in Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–84, trans. Catherine Porter, ed. Paul Rabinow,  (New York: The New Press, 1997), 319.

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day three: remember your “heroic truth” (and snarl against hoarders)

Ok, we’ve read all the horrors of the coronavirus pandemic; our minds are thoroughly alerted and alarmed to the perils out there in the world and Shelter-in-Place remains the rule. (When my husband left to the local Safeway, I said, “Be careful!” as if he were going to be wandering the streets of some faraway ghetto or jungle.)  Life feels different. Harder and more uncertain. Like a war is beginning, or something is changing forever.

Today we need some encouragement (and to send out a collective snarl against evil-doers). First, let’s take the the high road. From the Meditations of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 121-180), Stoic philosopher:

“If you apply yourself to the task before you, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract you, but keeping your divine part pure, as if you might be bound to give it back immediately; if you hold to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with your present activities according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which you utter, you will live happily. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.”

“Hasten then to your appointed end and, throwing away idle hopes, come to your own aid, if you care at all for yourself, while it is in your power.”

–Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Book III, 12, 14.

In other words: be kind to yourself, but exercise self-discipline. Speak carefully and stay busy. Create now. No one can stop you from living according to your own rules.

Finally, there are some seriously annoying people out there doing seriously obnoxious things in this moment of public health crisis, from that jerk in Tennessee to the Senator in North Carolina. The law will punish evil-doers, one hopes. In the meantime, all of us have by now experienced toilet paper shortages caused by fearful fellow citizens.  Argh!  So a big THANK YOU to Seattle Times cartoonist David Horsey, whose work nails the ugliness of hoarding.

Be strong, stay busy, and see you tomorrow!