Not The Time

"Fear has a large shadow, but he himself is small." - Ruth Gendler

I look forward to the Saturday paper.  It is the fat issue with the big section of puzzles and games.  Delivery of our morning paper has been reliable and consistent for years.  The paper is always left on the front porch, rolled and bound with an elastic and on wet days, enclosed in a plastic bag.  So I was somewhat disappointed this morning when I stepped out to retrieve today's paper to find it blown apart, the pages soaking wet and scattered in the bushes.  No part of it was salvageable.  It was not bound by an elastic.  There was no protective bag in spite of the wind and rain.  I started thinking about that.  Why now would our very reliable paper delivery man stop doing what he has always done?  Is he afraid to handle the papers?  Are customers afraid to touch the handled papers?  I won't really ever know the answer to that but my best guess is that I'm right.

The level of fear is high at the time we most need to be fearless.  I understand the fear.  I am the person they would first disconnect if they needed the respirator for a younger person with a better chance of surviving.  But being afraid, won't change that reality.  I have been thinking about other times when the world has been afraid.  People of my parents' generation would know a lot about fear in the times of World War II but I can only imagine those times.  In my own time and world, I am thinking about the days and weeks after the terror attacks on 9/11. We wondered if our world would ever be the same.  We were suspicious of our neighbours, worried about whether we should travel or gather in large groups.  We longed for the days when we felt safe and 19 years later, when we were getting past those anxieties, we are there again.  But this I know for sure - it's not the time for fear. 

Our enemy is invisible.  It knows no politics, no borders, no religion, no age.  It is an equal opportunity terrorist and it will take all our strength and resolve to vanquish it.  We need to protect those who are most vulnerable, first by staying home whenever we can.  We need to keep our physical distance but not our emotional distance.  We need to reach out to help our neighbours and friends who need a hand right now, remembering that it is not safe for some people in our community even to make a distanced trip to the grocery store or pharmacy.  And we have to do our part to stop spreading misinformation and ramping up the level of fear. 

What if we ration our consumption of news so that instead of watching it all day, we watch it once or twice a day for a limited period?  As much as I love watching CNN, I have found I feel far less anxious since I turned it off and started following just Canadian news stations instead.  Watching the daily White House press conferences did nothing for my mental health.  What if instead of reposting the scariest, most sensational accounts of what's happening, we post pictures of beautiful scenery, art or happier days?  What if instead of focusing on reporting on the transgressions of our neighbours, we reach out to help our neighbours with phone calls or notes left in their mailboxes to help them feel less isolated so perhaps they won't feel such hunger to break the distancing rules?  What if instead of unleashing our anger, we unleash our inner-artists by painting or drawing, writing or baking, stringing beads or macaroni?  What if instead of reading post after post in Facebook, we read books with great stories?  If we do all that, we won't need to be afraid because we will have a real chance to beat COVID19, standing together and conquering together with pure, unadulterated, fearless love.