Eating your weight in Doritos and Oreos while binge watching all that you can on Netflix? Unmotivated to clean closets, tackle the rising wave of clutter, ride your bike, take an online yoga class?
You are not alone.
Dave Portnoy tweets: Quarantine is like airport rules for eating. Everything is fair game.
Moiz Ali tweets: Is anyone else eating three day’s worth of food in one day during the quarantine? If not, me neither.
I think we are numbing ourselves in one manner or another because we are paralyzed by the realization that we are in choppy, uncharted waters. And the safe harbor is not in sight.
Where’s the light house?
A recent New York Times headline screams “No One Knows What’s Going to Happen Next.”
We don’t know if warm weather will save us from more deaths. We are finding many Covid tests to be inaccurate and contact tracing to be more than challenging. Unemployment rates are soaring and confidence in a quick economic recovery is waning. Food insecurity is rampant among the recently unemployed – people who have never experienced empty pantries are queuing up in lines of 200 cars or more to stave off hunger.
Can we trust statistics? Put our faith in science? Believe our politicians? Place faith in our leaders?
I – like you – am struggling with these issues and trying at the same time to be hopeful and upbeat and resourceful.
It’s true that in the United States, over 100,000 people have died from the Corona Virus. At the same time, 400,000 people have recovered. And Recovery is Hope. And Hope keeps us going.
Here’s a story I’d like to share:
A young woman was diagnosed with a terminal illness and given three months to live. She contacted her Pastor to discuss certain aspects of her final wishes.
She told him which songs she wanted sung at the service, what scriptures she would like read, and what outfit she wanted to be buried in. As the Pastor was preparing to leave her home, she excitedly exclaimed, “Wait, there’s one more thing. I want to be buried with a fork in my right hand.”
The Pastor was puzzled.
“My grandmother once told me this story” the young woman explained. “She always remembered during social events that when the dishes of the main course were being cleared, someone would inevitably lean over and say, ‘Keep your fork.’ It was her favorite part because she knew that something better was coming…like velvety chocolate cake or deep-dish apple pie. Something wonderful, and with substance!
“So, I just want people to see me there in that casket – with a fork in my hand – and I want them to wonder ‘What’s with the fork?’ Then I want you to tell them: ‘Keep your fork…the best is yet to come.’”
Let this simple tale remind us to have faith that our ideals will be upheld, the constitution adhered to, the country united and, that truly, the best is yet to come.
Keep Preserving Your Bloom,
Iris