Sylvia's Journal

When we lived in Kabul, lockdowns were common, especially after a bomb was dropped someplace or rumors circulated. We had a garden and people who cooked and cleaned for us and a good internet connection. After work was done we played scrabble,  watched a movie, I embroidered, and knitted. We had an elliptical machine upstairs and I had a yoga routine; we even had hula hoops and practiced with the man who was hired to guard us. The enemy was outside, unseen and often undetectable, only bigger than our current enemy, but a potentially lethal enemy nevertheless.

Compared to those days, our current lockdown, called by a different name, is easier to manage. It’s true we don’t have anyone cooking and cleaning for us, and getting the newspaper and mail is more complicated now, what with gloves and disinfecting anything that comes into our house from the outside. But we have a yard that is waking up from winter, we live by the ocean with its calming rhythm of the tides and waves. We can have a glass of wine whenever we want, or something stronger.

I feel incredibly lucky, blessed, privileged – no hardship for us here. But I am troubled by my inability to do anything other than giving money (selectively, in the face of overwhelming needs) for those who are homeless,  on the run, displaced, stuck in no-man’s lands and/or addicted to things they can no longer get. 

I completed a 10 day course on Headspace on appreciation – with everything so out of balance it seemed like a good course to take, but I have found it hard to meditate on this topic – if there had been an exam I would have flunked it. Not because I have nothing to appreciate. Rather, because I find it very hard to live in the here and now in these very unsettling times where disappointments over what could have been, or worry about what is ahead crowd out the ‘being here now.’