A skill we are all struggling with at the moment is letting go. In particular the letting go, of the feeling that things are unfair and that a sense of a huge injustice is taking place on a massive scale. There is this undercurrent which brings an unsettling feeling of being permanently exhausted, and a perception deep down this nagging suspicion the Karen’s of this crazy pandemic world must be to blame. Our bent to want to be critical and find fault with others, paired with an underlying sense of apprehension seems to be finely tuned and honed at finding a target in these long moments. Sometimes we aren’t even aware how strong this desire has become because like the frog boiling in water it was getting plenty of incidental exercise in the last few years. Eastern Australia went through a period of harsh unrelenting drought that has the amazing ability to slowly eat away at you from the inside out. We are animals that on a conscious or unconscious level realise the importance of water for daily life. Being told consistently it’s looking bleak, even though when you turn on the tap there it is, we naturally start to feel uncertain and as a species we are told that uncertainty is a sign someone must be to blame. Even though life is of course naturally filled with these very uncertainty. Whole organisations now live and breathe on the fact you shouldn’t have these feelings, because in the old days this never happened. Distance from an event can make it seem far more tranquil for the simple fact we know how it turns out. Where as during the time its self the moment is in flux and uncertainty. Hence why the past can seem calmer through our eyes than that presents at times.
So from the drought, we then moved into a period like no other across Eastern Australia. Gigantic consuming fires that seemed to burn and wipe out everything. Throwing great columns of thick smoke and embers into the air. Blanketing cities and towns for months, dialling the feeling of foreboding to a thousand degrees. Eyes consistently stinging, breathing laboured and the warning signs for the coming doom literally falling around you. Yeah life seemed pretty damn intense. Notably for the hundreds that lost property and livestock, plus the destruction to our native wildlife flora and fauna was hellish in scale.
Yet somehow that period passed and then a series of severe thunderstorms with massive hail stones causes millions of dollars of damage to homes, buildings and cars. The scars of which were visible for months afterwards. In an affluent country like Australia it was kind of bizarre to see that Mother Nature hadn’t finished with you yet. Leaving yet another big calling card to go with the blackened landscape. People living in war zones around the world must see these scars to their normal all day everyday. Some will have grown up so the scars are sadly they’re normal. But for most of us these scars a raw reminder that things haven’t been ‘normal’.
Ok I’ll put all that behind me, life can move on now, surely I can crawl into some calming stable quiet times. Oops and along comes COVID-19, boom. At first everyone felt alone but connected. But then naturally parts started to open up and gain their freedoms, while others stayed on and off in lockdown shackles. Progressively some had ‘normal lives’ again while others were stuck in a time warp loop watching from their front doors as friends and family went to work, bbq’s, social events and holidays. Seemingly carefree and sending, ‘you are in our thoughts’ as they bolted out the front door towards your hoped for normal. Your rules weren’t in their world your waves of dark clouds didn’t cover their skies. Except if they wanted to travel interstate then your situation was annoying and inconvenient to them. Meanwhile you put your head down and try yet again to accept it is, what it is. Yet the numbers seem to be going up, there must be rule breakers, people not caring enough to follow the basic restriction, some of them are even out there on tv demanding freedom and marching in the street. Why am I the only one doing the right thing, putting my head down accepting this is for the collective good. Yet those bloody rule breakers out there in their hundreds thumbing their noses at your quiet heavy sacrifice. Do they just not care these thousands of rule breakers shouting and marching all over my acceptance? The weight seems heavier and slowly heavier, the community oblations seem to be yours alone. God damn it, these bloody rule breakers. And still the numbers go up! Why am I even bothering karma seems to have gone on a permanant holiday. Who cares; why I even bothering to care. Stuff you all! I go to sleep slowly seething with anger and frustration and wake up with a dark cloud of who the blood hell cares, see look, the numbers have gone up AGAIN! Why am I the only rule follower, stuff you rule breakers I want my freedom too. The cloud gets darker and heavier. Even little victories feel hollow and meaningless in a world without community spirit or collective purpose. Bloody rule breakers!!!
Then you decide to step outside into a beautiful spring day dodging thunderstorms but the air smells so wonderfully fresh. You decide despite your own dark heavy clouds you’ll hike up a near by hill. You don your mask despite the rule breakers bring a bag of snacks, water, rain coats, water and an extra jumper with you; after all this is Canberra in spring. It could be sleeting in and hour or so. Taking your little girl’s hand in yours and lifting her over the flooded causeway. She smiles and hugs you. Maybe things aren’t so dark after all. I set out, no music as we have been swooped by angry magpies this last few weeks and my little girl’s adventurous spirit has lost a little confidence with the outdoors. We want to hear them coming where possible. The first magpie is near the path but he’s busily after worms and couldn’t care less about us. We sit on a rock near by, watching and listening to him moving through his home turf. She’s now more relaxed and ready to start up the hill. Off we set; passing our first fellow walkers coming the other way. They have masks on too. We exchange hellos and smiles behind our respective masks. Must be the only other non rule breakers in the country. Next ones are bound to be part of the millions of rule breakers not caring about our sacrifice.
But the next person is a guy and his dog, mask on, waving to my daughter happily as she commented how cute his dog was. Ok so that must have been a statistical anomaly the next ones we see are bound to be the rule breakers and floggers of chaos I know are lurking around ruining everything for everyone else. And yes sure enough there she is coming down the hill. No mask on her face. KAREN the ruler breaker, the one demanding to see the manager because the rules don’t apply to her as she can’t possibly breathe through her mask like the rest of us! The one unwilling to be inconvenienced, even a little bit for the greater good of the community! Every muscle tightens damn her, she’s not going to get a friendly hello How dare she be the grinding weight against my chest. Part of the horde of rule breakers who darken my thoughts and bring a dark cloud that never seems to leave these days. Yes that KAREN is here to my very front!
Except that’s not what happened, as she spotted us and we were still a good distance away at this stage probably 50-60 metres she stopped and retrieved her mask from around her neck placing it back on and walked towards us giving us plenty of room to walk the other way. Despite my earlier internal protest, hello’s were again exchanged eyes met, a connection with your fellow human being made. Then along come other walkers passes us by. My chest lighter, more hellos all masks wearing, comments about how wet the track was or slippery in places, isn’t it just amazing to be able to be outsider though. Comments how humid it was and the rain looked closer again around the next corner to the west. The sky was giving us all brilliant changes of colour and thoughts of how timeless this beautiful land is and how small we are upon it. Walking though terribly unfit, felt lighter and the burdens of community were here to see. People had masks on, they were here doing the right thing. Talking and walking with friends while wearing masks and if they were doing heavy exercise ie running uphill. Then they would give you a wide berth.
Seeing numbers in endless press conferences and reading the news gives you a feeling of being jaded and an unsupportive community. Yet the real life experience can be different especially in some areas. The contradiction of what you are doing and living can be in stark contrast with what you are seeing and hearing. The drudgery of doing what you feel is right without fanfare and thanks can seem to be lost in the emotions of injustice and core values being swept away by the tens of Karens and Steves snubbing their nose at the community effort. Effort like this is unrelenting and unforgiving because if you do the right thing for a hundred days and then on day 101 throw it all away and end up being a super spreader by day 105 then all your tranquil ripples of good community spirit are splashed away in a blast of selfishness.
So in these times of hardship when there isn’t a war to be won, a tribe to be hated or demonised. Only our fellow community members who are feeling just as frayed as you. The clouds are heavy with us all, and yet if you say hello and gesture a smile with other parts of your body as we can’t see smiles any more. You realise we are all walking heavy; but that moment of connection can help lift a dark cloud and blow it away. Life well and truly sucks at the moment but when you dig in you realise if I look to carry my footsteps lightly then the community is still there and humanity is still there as numbers don’t tell the whole story. Scarifies are still being made and there is light at the end of the tunnel, and just maybe it isn’t the train it’s self but a nudge and shift towards the end. Shuffling towards our collective new ‘normal’ what ever that is. Because we are all living in flux but someone in a hundred years will see the 2019-2021 as a blip. That can’t have given those at the time, much concern. Oh how little do they realise, how wearing it all truly was.
Say hello in that fleeting moment; to your fellow mask wearer. Thus instead of wanting to make anger splashes in your surrounding and blast your ever increasing bad mood towards the millions of Karens and Steves who deserve to receive your vengeance. Tread lightly as everyone is hurting consciously or unconsciously. Some are expressing it in the worst possible ways and others are engulfed in their own ever expanding pitiless gloom. Some causes do need to be heard; some just want to make noise. But the majority are slowly trying each day to find the strength to show up in this thankless task of following the rules and doing the collective right when it’s been a long time since those efforts seemed to matter. And yet they do very much, the health system doesn’t work with huge margins to open up more capacity, transport hasn’t got endless options if there was a cluster within drivers or warehouses and these needed to be shut down due to high out breaks like abattoirs were at there beginning of this pandemic sending shock waves through supermarket stores across the nation. Our collective; are you ok today is definitely a; ‘meh not really’. In so many ways we still all understand we are the lucky country with generally good welfare safety nets and a health system operating to save lives without giving us huge bills to pay into our futures long after the pandemic is hopefully gone.
So these ripples of anxiety and concern that have been slowly bombarding us all for the last 3 to 4 years have now been starting to break down the walls of our resilience, like water moving along a river. It is timeless as it wears away at the rocks carving a path and gradually finding weak points to seep through. Looked at and felt up close it seems overwhelming. But the high afar aerial shot transforms that same river to a look of tranquil majestic beauty.
So from up high maybe we are just being reshaped towards something better. If I can regroup again and again when I’m long past the point of thinking my tiny speck in the community effort isn’t worth it. When my thoughts are telling me everyone else has stopped making the effort. I want to do as I please too, surely I can. Stuff this feeling of ‘meh’!
Yet out there on that hike I witnessed people probably feeling just as weary and jaded, yet 8 or 9 out of ten either returned my hello or gave me a hello first. They engaged for the moment the collective grind was there and shared. The few that didn’t had the look of my space is extremely fragile please don’t knock at my walls or they were fully immersed in distraction away from distraction so are barely operating in the space they are existing in.
To quieten the ripples around us and step out from the clouds that want to shade our sunshine, telling us there is only doom and gloom out there. We need to acknowledge it’s been a long road and our feelings have been slammed against the wall one too many times and then dragged across a rough surface. Except feeling generally come in waves they rarely stay blasting 24/7. But all too often our brains once fatigued and the worlds burden have set in. We forget to readjust after the wave has passed and simply stay down waiting inevitably for the next one to just hit, mercilessly crashing into us.
Yet is the wave real or now imagined from our feels of being trapped and being consistently reminded nothing seems to be in our control. A sense of unease and unsure, the worst being you can’t seem to solve this problem.
However is it even yours to solve? Perhaps it’s yours to just be part of the big collective. On the whole we like to solve our own problems so in a way the situation is both empowering and a helpless feeling of powerless at the same time.
Except that too is a lie because we are all feeling meh and battered, and yet if we simply walk and say a hello to our fellow community members between the waves crashing down, suddenly the Karen’s and the Steve’s aren’t in the majority. Control has always been an illusion but control of oneself is possible. Then suddenly the Karen’s and Steve’s don’t matter, because in your moment you are reconnecting with the bigger aerial photo of a community on the whole trying as best it can to do the right thing and keep your humanity along the way. And sometimes all it takes to help that is a simple heartfelt ‘hello’ while wearing your mask. Ripples move in both directions make your’s light and hopefully those that genuinely needed to be heard can feel supported and those that are just making noise don’t get to take control of you. Sometimes the hardest darkest most meh is when you are near the end but it just won’t tick over to be done. Not yet at least. Let the wave of injustice and intolerance pass, understanding you can still be feeling blah but you aren’t stuck to that wave. Now is your choice. Do you stand back up one more time so we can all get a great aerial shot with you included standing beside the rest of us, weary though we might be but walking softly towards a collective goal by influencing the one you get a say in the most and ultimately who matters the most. Yourself.
History won’t remember us as heroes, nor will a generation from now realise how much resilience it took just to keep putting on a mask when there were no physical enemies banging on the castle gates. Our instincts are geared for the actions of flight or fight. We suck at the long game where there is no glory or marching bands, only venturing out a little past the front door, watching others live by rules you can’t just yet. So as we can almost see the finish line in sight fingers crossed don’t forget to let the wave wash away from you one more time, stand up, tread lightly and remember to start practicing your actual smile. Because you never know one day soon you might actually be greeting people for real soon. Take care everyone.
A great YouTube clip that can explain about the current feeling of Meh way better then me and well worth a watch.
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I enjoyed this very much, and it resonated very keenly with me. I think I’ve felt all that, many times over, in the last 18 months. You put it all so beautifully, and it’s so positive to be reminded of choice. Thank you.
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