Tired of Worrying

It’s pouring rain this morning in Short Pump. The wind has picked up. Dark clouds are low in the morning sky. I can hear the roar of the downpour on the roof, washing away the heavy pollen, flooding away the thousands of maple tree helicopters that fell over the weekend. I suppose I would be forgiven for wishing that this storm could also sweep the COVID-19 virus into the storm drains and out to sea. I’m tired of it all. Aren’t you?

I’m tired of the worry. Who will get it? How long will this confinement last? How much more damage will be done to our economic life before it’s done? What will the world look like when it’s over? I have no answers. Despite reading a thousand articles from a thousand perspectives, I am no closer to being able to reach any firm conclusions than I was when I was blissfully ignorant. And now, the uniting power that this crisis had in the early days of March has given way to the same old partisan divides that plagued us before. What camp are you in? Democrat or Republican? Trump or Biden? Fauci or Birx? It is as tiresome as it is infuriating. But, it is who we are now.

I will go into the office this morning as I have since it started. I will have telephone conversations. I will FaceTime with clients and answer their questions, offer my guidance. I will stand apart from some of my best friends in the world and commiserate. I miss the physical closeness. It feels odd to keep people away, the whole six feet thing feels further than that. But at least I get to see them, to hear their views on everything. Then, I leave around noon and head back home. I put call-forwarding on my office phone so that during the afternoon, incoming calls come to my cell phone. Few calls come in the afternoon, I’ve discovered. My clients have also gotten tired of talking about this mess. What more is there to say?

My hope is that we are closer to the end of COVID-19 than we are to its beginning. I have reason to believe that we are, but like everything else with this virus, there are no sure things. But, I choose hope over despair, optimism over negativity. Despite whatever my personal feelings might be about the Coronavirus, I will continue to do everything that I have been asked to do by my government. I will trust that they know better than I do at this point. They are privy to information that I am not, so if they say “shelter in place” “keep social distancing” that’s what I will do. When this is all over, we will know who was “right” and who was “wrong” about it all. But for now I will do my part, if not for my own well-being, for the well being of my neighbors. If we discover that all this economic disruption was unnecessary, then recriminations will follow. There will be plenty of blame to go around after the final reports are written. 

But right now as the rain falls, the last thing I care about is the pettiness of politics. I just want to find the light at the end of this interminable tunnel. I want to be able to hug my friends, order from a menu in a crowded restaurant, shake a client’s hand. I want to get in my car and drive to Maine. I want to never hear the word Zoom again. I want to sit on my aisle seat at Hope church, drop my check into the bread pan as it is passed down my row, the meet up with my Sunday lunch bunch at Anokha’s for Lasooni Gobhi and the Tandoori platter.

Have a safe week, everyone.