january: intention
monthly theme: [endurance]
Boy do I really NOT want to approach this month’s theme because in another universe where we did everything right, we wouldn’t be going into the 3rd year of a pandemic and “endurance” wouldn’t need to be on our radar. But like always, I’m finding that my resistance to the theme is a juicy part of exploring the theme. It’s why I started this project in the first place…
Well, I really started the Year of Healing because I wanted us to begin unpacking, understanding, and healing from a year of Covid-19. But this is my second to last month of the project and we keep experiencing wave after wave, variant after variant. The sensation is on par with banging your head against a rock that you’re eternally pushing up a hill. What else is there to do when new actions seem to lead to the same Covid-spreading results?
It’s so fucking exhausting and I really don’t know how much more of this I can take. Most mornings in December, the first thought on my mind was, “What if I’d never heard of Covid-19 before?” I just yearn for this to end, to be able to take off my mask safely.
I was talking with a friend once about how she’s so over the pandemic, but she clarified that it doesn’t mean she feels like she’s ready to give up on Covid safety precautions. And I told her that, shit, sometimes I feel as if I’m ready to give up on Covid safety precautions (but my anxiety and typical role in group projects won’t let me).
I feel like it’s been really easy to forget certain things about this virus (namely incubation periods) as we continue to deal with it. But since this is the first time any of us have remotely experienced anything so distressing, so confusing, and burdensome so collectively for so long, it’s easy, almost necessary for survival, for our brains to override early-pandemic information with newer suggestions or even desires. Even though in the context of the last 2 years, Covid precautions must be admitted as the precedent, the longevity of them is still an unprecedented experience for those of us alive today.
And for some people, it might sound “good” to update information as we receive it, and sure, that’s typically the case; however, the way the U.S. government has decided to share messaging about the pandemic, no matter who’s in office, it was/is very clear that public health and safety have never been the goal. We’ve been told many things that are correct, sure, but that doesn’t mean that they’re right or even helpful for a greater good/safety/wellness. We’ve been told that it’s okay to risk getting our waiter sick because the restaurant business is just so worth it.
Like, I’m sorry, but absolutely no dining experience is worth someone’s life–I cannot believe the truth of that message has been muddled as we trek through the pandemic. And yet, after almost two years, some of us now believe that a restaurant dining experience is definitely worth risking our own or someone else’s life.
Now I don’t mean to sound dramatic, I just mean to get down to the intention of “endurance,” which I believe is to not lose sight of why you start something in the first place. It is to see your goal until its end.
I’ve just wanted a cookie, some sort of fucking reward for denying myself of the many pleasures that have become life-threatening during a pandemic. But not only does that sound childish and possibly even silly, but that’s just not how any of the Covid precautions work. They only work if we can endure the full breadth of them.
Endurance involves acceptance, commitment, and resolve from the very beginning until the absolute end. And in the case of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has meant masking, distancing, and staying away from large gatherings from March 2020 till now (and at this rate, well into the future).
And it’s hard to contemplate this idea of endurance as we see no end in sight– especially if you’ve been doing everything right this whole fucking time. This is why I resent even having this theme of endurance come up. It is an unfair burden given to all of us, yet only picked up by some. Of course, my dad always had the very (un)helpful saying that, “life isn’t fair,” but I do think in the name of “endurance,” it can be helpful to gripe about some of the bullshit we’ve experienced.
Call me a whiney snowflake, but there are plenty of things to be upset about. It’s a marathon (not a sprint) that none of us have trained for. And the fucked up part in this metaphor is that taking a water break could be detrimental to your health and others’. And yet, to continue on at this pace and for such a distance, we definitely need some replenishment. Something to refuel us on into the third year of this wearying journey.
What could give us the strength to continue on this late in the game? Would meditating on our endurance be helpful or maddening at this point? And can we move beyond/through this exasperation as it pertains to the reality at hand? I mean, it’d be necessary to grapple with such dizzying fatigue in order to remain as close to our lived experience–to admit that we’re tired and have been failed and wronged numerous times by systems marketed as keeping us safe and relatively stable. Systems that have endured no changes, no updates other than the ones you download for Zoom meetings… We’ve changed everything in our lives to keep these malfunctioning bureaucracies going during a pandemic, rather than structuring society and Covid-safety efforts around actual safety of human lives. And that seems pretty inhumane to endure.