winter 2022 covid stance: let it go

twice in the last few days, i’ve been inconvo with friends about whether or not to cancel something due to covid. our current covid situation looks like this in the u.s.:

imho, we need a full shutdown (like probably more than we needed when we got close in march 2020. instead, our national diagloue is how we can keep everything going.

đŸ˜”â€đŸ’«

this morning i was reading essentialism and mckeown referenced this c.s. lewis quote:

The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers when there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under. — C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“running about with fire extinguishers when there is a flood” feels dead on the money for this moment.

every ounce of energy i put into the “cancel or not to cancel” question takes energy away from what i believe is the flood. aka our systems are showing their obvious failures. and instead of focusing on what’s wrong we’re trying to piece it all together and keep it going.

floods are overwhelming. i feel that. and it’s much easier to do a small thing and feel like you’re being successful. in fact, i often argue for aiming for small things and getting wins that build over time rather than aiming too big and feeling failure.

but putting out fires when you should be building a raft (or if you’re into dreaming, an arc) is short-sighted at best. and if you distracted yourself so much you don’t have enough time to actually build the boat, putting out fires is much worse than short-sighted. yes, start small. but start small on right problem.

my stance for the past month or so (starting with my cancelled trip home to florida for xmas/new years) has been to cancel everything and then grieve. grieving is a critical part of letting go. and, given the world we’re living in, every chance i get to practice letting go feels like a good one. my muscles for holding on are already pretty strong. my letting go muscles are what need work. because, based on what i see around me right now, we’re just at the beginning of the bigger letting go we’re gonna be faced with sooner rather than later.

letting go is my stance. it helps. especially because sooner than most of us would like, the biggest letting go we have to do is coming and there’s nothing that holding on will add in that moment other than suffering.

ps - i have alarmist tendencies so take all of this with a grain of salt and please filter it though your own experience and wisdom. pps - i’ve been thinking about this for my nibblings, too. many of my nibblings are being treated REALLY well. and i love that for them. but i worry that in treating them really well, we are hindering their ability to develop the actual skills and capacities they’re going to need to survive the world we’re giving them. their childhoods are already not as nice as ours. and, based on current trends, it doesn’t seem like we’re positioning things to just start getting better all of a sudden. almost every system we’re holding is tearing at its seams. so like
 maybe we should be working them on how to handle their big hard emotions/experiences like fear and overwhelm and sadness and exhaustion. idk. that feels shitty to think but i can’t help thinking it.


words / writing / post-processing
approx 600w / 16min / 5min