I have lost track of the days, the month of March having slipped into a timeless warp, one day indistinguishable from the next, the workweek and the weekend having been melded together. The only reliable, and for me significant marker, has been the hours that the markets are open and the hours when they are not. So, at 4:00 in the morning Wall Street sleeps. Maybe that’s why I gravitate to this hour.
Like all of you, I have learned a few things about myself during this extraordinary time, some good and some bad. I’ve discovered that I’m a lot moodier than I thought. There are many days when I wake up imbued with great optimism, itching for a fight, ready to battle this thing. But other days I have to fight the temptation to curl up in a ball in the corner. Luckily I am able to overcome that defeatist inclination quickly, there being no future in surrender.
I have learned how much I crave order and routine, now that it has been taken from me. For three weeks now I have been denied admission to American Family Fitness, thus ending a nearly 17 year run of three workouts a week at that reliable institution. I cannot tell you how much I miss it.
My office has been transformed from one of the most comforting, familiar places in my life to a place of great heaviness. It’s hard to explain, this heaviness. When I am there I feel a weight descending. Normally my office is where great foolishness and mayhem happens, most of it courtesy of my childish pranks and incessant trash talk. Consequently, it's great fun to be there. My colleagues are exceptional people, very much like a family. March has changed the dynamic, made it a place of great seriousness. A sober realism has come to visit. There isn’t an ounce of panic in the place, but anxious concern is palpable. Its heavy and at times suffocating...an inescapable gravity.
I have been disabused of the naive assumption that in my 62 years I had built a secure life impenetrable by the vicissitudes of life. I had started to take on the conceit that I had somehow shielded myself and my family from most of the dangers of life by my commitment to industry and ingenuity. It turns out that there were more than a few weaknesses in Fortress Dunnevant. While I am far less vulnerable than most, I am not safe. None of us are safe.
I have also learned how important other people are to my well being and happiness. I suppose this isn’t a new realization, but it has become much clearer over the past thirty days. My children, my wife, my brother and sisters, my small group from church, my closest friends, my clients, all of the people who have populated my life are suddenly so dear. I find myself suddenly so much more solicitous of my neighbors, so much more aware of the man across the way from me at the gas pump, or the lady behind the cash register at the drug store, even the anonymous customer service voice in Des Moines. How are they holding up, I find myself asking...not as polite small talk but because I sincerely want to know. Is there anything I can do to help, I wonder? In a raging sea of bad outcomes, this is a great blessing. Humanity, empathy and compassion are making a comeback.
I have also relearned something I’ve always known. I picked the right woman. I come home every day to her. She is always here, busy doing something useful and practical, reassuring me that this will eventually blow over, reminding me...sometimes against overwhelming evidence...that I am a good man and that she is proud of me. Her steadfast love redeems the day.
She is right. This storm will blow over. We will come out the other side. When we do, hopefully we will be better people than the ones who stumbled into the COVID-19 battle full of pride and arrogance.
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