Month: March 2020

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Let It Glow, Let It Glow, Let It Glow

I’m convinced that Heather is a prophet.

When the coronavirus closures first started and people began staying around the homestead like an episode of Little House on the Prairie, my wife said she had the perfect idea for brightening up the situation. Literally.

“Everyone should put up their Christmas lights again,” she said. “We’ve all got this extra time and it’d be fun to drive around and see everything.”

Well.

Within two days of her pronouncement came word of the latest social media trend: people re-hanging their holiday lights to lift the spirits of quarantined neighbors.

I know Heather is always right but this has got to be a new record.

I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, we usually put out the brilliant colors and florid displays at the darkest time of the year – “In the Bleak Midwinter,” as Christina Rossetti put it. We labor and we plan so that we can light the night, lifting even the heaviest shadows of the soul with a burst of joy and exuberance that will not be denied.

Time has passed. Spring has come. With a snow shovel rather than a garden spade, but it’s spring nonetheless.

But for a lot of folks, the shadows of winter are still falling.

Life isn’t what it was. OK, it never is. But this one has been a hard shake. We’ve seen gathering places go quiet, events fold up and wait for healthier times. Most of us have learned to keep our distance and try to let the pandemic pass by. Some have made its acquaintance anyway.

At a time like this, even the most case-hardened introvert is going to feel some stress. Many people are feeling more than some. It’s a situation that can leave folks feeling disconnected, restless, uncertain, scared.

It’s a time when we need every piece of joy we can find.

So why not let there be light?

I confess to a little selfishness here. Missy, our developmentally disabled ward, has been very confused and frustrated by the situation. A born extrovert, she always wants to grab her Giant Red Purse ™ and GOOOO! She lives for concerts, dances, bowling groups, dinners out. All of which are pretty much out the door for a while.

But if you’re a regular reader, you also remember that Missy loves Christmas lights. It’s a literal driving passion – in that we pretty much spend most of December driving Longmont to discover the neighborhoods and displays we haven’t yet seen.

It lifts her soul. And that lifts mine.

That’s how a family works. Or a neighborhood. Or a community. You do the things that lift each other up so that we can all walk a little taller.

We do a lot of the big things right, the ones that keep the water flowing and the power running and the garbage picked up each week. But what sets a place in the heart is the little things.

Like the Kansas families who brought us dinner every night for a week after Heather had surgery.

Like the neighbor here who shoveled our front walk when he learned my back was having problems.

Like anybody who goes out of their way to add beauty, love, or joy to someone else’s life.

Those are the real lights in the darkness. The ones that break through even the longest isolation and remind us that we’re not alone. That we have neighbors, families, friends who care.

So let’s do it.

Let’s make this a town that Santa Claus would envy and the Stock Show would admire. Bring ‘em on. Light ‘em up. Make it glow.

And even if you can’t put lights on your house, remember to turn on the ones in your heart.

One way or another, we are going to make a dark moment shine.

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In The Moment

After last week, I’m starting to feel a bit whiplashed.

You too? Welcome to the club.

Every so often, we hit a moment where life seems to have only two speeds: full tilt or stopped in its tracks. In fact, it’s usually both at once. Events seem to rush by us like an express train bearing down on a Hollywood victim-of-the-week … and yet we feel frozen, unable to do anything but watch as our mental phaser resets to “stun.”

They’re the moments that mark a generation. Pearl Harbor. Kennedy. The Challenger explosion. The towers falling on 9/11.

And now this one. COVID-19. The moment where “social distancing” became a virtue and closures became common, from the local school to the NBA.

Granted, it’s not a single discrete moment. Viruses aren’t that simple. (And scheduling would be a lot easier if they were!) This snowball started down the hill in January, half a world away, and Colorado is just the latest skier in its path. But it’s quite possible and maybe even a little appropriate that Friday the 13th will be the date that stands in memory here – especially if you’re a Colorado kid faced with the longest Spring Break ever and almost nowhere to go.

In a way, we’ve been here before, if not quite on this scale. It hasn’t been that long, really, since polio epidemics were common. Even a hint that another outbreak of the disease was underway would be enough to close swimming pools, to have people keeping their distance from each other at movie theaters, to do what you needed to do to diminish the risk.

And then to worry. People do. We like to think we’re in control of our lives. And when that control proves to be an illusion, it’s a blow. A hard one.

We’ve long since driven polio back in defeat, armed with effective vaccines and dedicated souls. But worry is harder to eradicate than any disease. We want security. We want to keep our loved ones safe and happy. But how do you fight something you can’t even see?

The answer in one word: Together.

That’s how we always get through our worst moments.

Wildfires. Tornados. Blizzards. Floods. We know the drill for those, don’t we? We know to stay aware, to stay ready, to gather information and then act on it. To learn what we need to do before it’s necessary, so we can act in the moment if we have to. To be prepared and not panicked.

And most of all, in all of those situations and a hundred more, we know that the first rule is to look out for our neighbors.

We see it every time, whether it’s a random driver helping free someone else’s car from a snowdrift, or an entire nation sending aid to hurricane victims. You look for where you can help and how. And when someone does the same for you, it unbunches your shoulders just a little bit.

This time, the help is a little different than shoveling snow. Some of our neighbors are more at risk from the virus than others. Some already have it. We help them out by lowering the chances for it to spread, like a firebreak in the mountains. We help them out by being their (well-washed) hands for errands they can’t go out to do.

We help however we can. Because that’s what we do.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Easy to feel like one thin reed against the tide. No one person alone is big enough to meet the moment.

But we’re not alone.

And when we meet it together, that becomes the proudest moment of all.

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Inside Out

If anyone is feeling a little confused these days, you have my complete sympathy.

On the one hand, coronavirus news has flooded the airwaves, the front pages, and the social media outlets from here to the asteroid belt. (I’m happy to say that Ceres has yet to report its first case.) In among the unceasing reminders on how to wash our hands – our kindergarten teachers must be so disappointed – we’re constantly told to do our bit to make sure the virus doesn’t spread. “Stay home if you’re sick.” “Isolate.” “Quarantine in place.”

Introverts everywhere, our hour has come.

On the other hand, this is also an election year. And so we’re also being bombarded with images of campaign rallies on every side, urging people to let the nation hear our voice. “Get up.” “Get out.” “Show your support.”

So we desperately need to engage … and we desperately need to separate.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s definition of a first-rate intelligence – the ability to hold two conflicting ideas in the mind simultaneously and still function – is making more and more sense.

I know, we’ll work through it. Not just because both elections and public health are necessary. But because frankly, this kind of chaos and tension is nothing new for us.

We’ve been dealing with this for generations.

It’s a phenomenon that Bill Bishop addressed 16 years ago in a book called “The Big Sort.” Given the ability to live where they want, he noted, people mostly choose to live near people like themselves. By itself, that doesn’t sound like a bad thing. After all, who doesn’t want to get along with the neighbors?

But politics in a democracy depends on multiple voices engaging and finding common ground. That’s one thing when you may be constantly brushing against friends and neighbors who hold different perspectives and maybe challenge your views. But if more and more of the people you encounter are ones like you, where your beliefs and assumptions are taken for granted, that skill of engagement and compromise has less opportunity to be used.

What doesn’t get used, withers.

The process had already been accelerating with the increased mobility in the decades since World War II, when the internet and social media came along and sent it into hyperdrive. People had more power than ever to choose their “neighbors,” to choose their news sources … in a way, to choose their reality.

And when that reality finally collides against another, when the bubbles burst, the result becomes not compromise but conflict.

I don’t want to paint too rosy a picture of American democracy or too dark a picture of the online world. There’s always been a certain amount of conflict within the process, and even outright violence. (You could ask Alexander Hamilton, for example … but better do it quick, he’s got a duel at dawn.) And the same internet that can isolate has also introduced friends that would have never met, opened up experiences that would have been unreachable for many, and allowed outright explosions of imagination and creativity. It can and does allow for increased connection, even when isolated by disability, circumstance, or, yes, illness.

Politics and the internet are tools. They can be used for good or ill. And right now, they’re throwing one of our most basic conflicts into stark relief.

The need to engage. The desire to separate.

Long after the coronavirus has been dealt with, that clash will still be there. And it’ll still be the real challenge. These days, even under a quarantine, one can stay within the walls of their home and still be connected to the world.

But the quarantines of our minds – now THAT’S a barrier. And one we’ll have to resolve for as long as we’re living together on this planet.

Though I hear Ceres is very nice this time of year.