Hi folks! As always, if you skipped issue #8, maybe go back for a read and feel free to leave thoughts on it here.
That said, we’re going a slightly different route this week for a discussion prompt.
How are you living up to — and in — this challenging moment in human history?
To the medical professionals and others on the front line — grocery store employees, gas station attendants, Amazon warehouse workers, utility workers, and more — thank you. To everyone else: how are you approaching this?
If your answer is, “It’s all I can do to stay home and watch Netflix and try not to cry” — that’s totally ok. No judgment here, we’re all just doing what we can. Hopefully others will share helpful strategies for getting through each day.
On a personal level, my life hasn't changed that much, which I recognize is a place of huge privilege. I work from home to begin with, I mostly exercise directly out my door, I try not to drive places. But obviously, even though my day-to-day hasn't changed that much, there's a lot going on. I've been trying to work meditation into my daily life for a few months now and in the face of this situation, I'm fully committing to it. I think meditation is an incredible tool both for trying to understand (and have the capacity to change) the paradigms that govern your thought processes and for tackling anxiety and depression caused by exogenous circumstances (like a pandemic). I'd encourage anyone who's finding our current situation psychologically challenging -- and, frankly, everyone -- to try making it a daily practice. On a practical note, I didn't start using an app until about two weeks ago, but I've found that it's making it much easier to be consistent.
On a broader level, figuring out how best to help continues to be a process. I'm writing -- this newsletter, occasional op-ed essays -- and while I think that's important, my writing tends to focus on the longer term and the bigger picture. It doesn't really help anyone *now*.
To that end, I've been reaching out to my elected representatives to try to advocate for policies that will help society's vulnerable and I've been encouraging others to do so by writing template letters and contact lists. I've been making noise on social media along the same lines, though I have no delusions about the practical usefulness of that endeavour.
I'm still trying to figure out what else I can do. Some of you know that I'm also a web developer and programmer. I'm participating in a three week hackathon with the goal of producing some kind of useful tool, and I'm actively thinking about / looking for other projects I can support in this realm. (Anyone?)
A viral pandemic is obviously different in many ways from the climate crisis or any other planetary boundary-related crisis. It's slightly more egalitarian: you can't completely buy your way our of being killed by a virus, at least not yet. But you can buy health care, you can buy an isolation bunker (no joke!), and you can of course buy the privilege of staying home and either working from home or not needing to work to pay your rent, mortgage, bills. In that way, it's not so different. The people hit hardest are still the most vulnerable: refugees, the homeless, indigenous communities, and more. Some of the strategies we employ now will obviously be specific to a contagious pandemic. But most of them will be geared towards helping the world's most in-need, and we need to do everything we can to ensure that these strategies stick around long after the pandemic does. To help in the face of a pandemic, you don't need to be on the front lines, developing medical devices (though if anyone can build a helmet CPAP system in the USA, apparently that would be very useful) or treating illness, you just need to be able to help the people who are less able to cope with the circumstances we're in than you are.
On a personal level, my life hasn't changed that much, which I recognize is a place of huge privilege. I work from home to begin with, I mostly exercise directly out my door, I try not to drive places. But obviously, even though my day-to-day hasn't changed that much, there's a lot going on. I've been trying to work meditation into my daily life for a few months now and in the face of this situation, I'm fully committing to it. I think meditation is an incredible tool both for trying to understand (and have the capacity to change) the paradigms that govern your thought processes and for tackling anxiety and depression caused by exogenous circumstances (like a pandemic). I'd encourage anyone who's finding our current situation psychologically challenging -- and, frankly, everyone -- to try making it a daily practice. On a practical note, I didn't start using an app until about two weeks ago, but I've found that it's making it much easier to be consistent.
On a broader level, figuring out how best to help continues to be a process. I'm writing -- this newsletter, occasional op-ed essays -- and while I think that's important, my writing tends to focus on the longer term and the bigger picture. It doesn't really help anyone *now*.
To that end, I've been reaching out to my elected representatives to try to advocate for policies that will help society's vulnerable and I've been encouraging others to do so by writing template letters and contact lists. I've been making noise on social media along the same lines, though I have no delusions about the practical usefulness of that endeavour.
I'm still trying to figure out what else I can do. Some of you know that I'm also a web developer and programmer. I'm participating in a three week hackathon with the goal of producing some kind of useful tool, and I'm actively thinking about / looking for other projects I can support in this realm. (Anyone?)
A viral pandemic is obviously different in many ways from the climate crisis or any other planetary boundary-related crisis. It's slightly more egalitarian: you can't completely buy your way our of being killed by a virus, at least not yet. But you can buy health care, you can buy an isolation bunker (no joke!), and you can of course buy the privilege of staying home and either working from home or not needing to work to pay your rent, mortgage, bills. In that way, it's not so different. The people hit hardest are still the most vulnerable: refugees, the homeless, indigenous communities, and more. Some of the strategies we employ now will obviously be specific to a contagious pandemic. But most of them will be geared towards helping the world's most in-need, and we need to do everything we can to ensure that these strategies stick around long after the pandemic does. To help in the face of a pandemic, you don't need to be on the front lines, developing medical devices (though if anyone can build a helmet CPAP system in the USA, apparently that would be very useful) or treating illness, you just need to be able to help the people who are less able to cope with the circumstances we're in than you are.