Pain in resistance - Fear - I am okay

They have decided we can work at home since walk in traffic has virtually ceased over the past two weeks.  I got an email from a woman I visited two Fridays ago who had just got back from London. She wanted to let me know that she was still interested in the project.  She has been busy these past few weeks visiting her daughter who just had her fourth grandchild.  At the end of the email she said she had not been sick since her trip to London. This was a relief for me.

Even though this is a un-nerving time for everyone it also is a time of reflection.  A time to figure out what is important to us and for many a time to stop running from our fears. For most we have enough and getting by with less for a month will not kill us.  In that way we are more fortunate than many places on this planet.

I keep comparing this to the hurricane warnings we face every season because it seems familiar.  We get ready for something huge headed our way and then if it doesn't happen then we are happy.  The flip side of that is that we spent weeks in fear preparing and even sometimes evacuating for nothing. The stress of this can be overwhelming but at least there is a timeline for when the storm will pass.

For me I just make a reasonable plan and then let the fear go.  The fear is biological triggered by the idea that there is an unknown predator somewhere out there. We can feel the fear of the rest of our herd and so we think we should do more than we are doing. Our mind is searching for a solution that only time will give us.

This also reminds me of when I was fighting my depression and grief. I wanted that time in my life to be over but there is nothing I could do to magically make time pass so I could be on the other side of an feel good again. I wanted to know that I would be alright again at some point but I couldn't get there  without time.  My mind just could't accept that I had no control over where I was at that moment.

When I finally surrendered to the situation and decided okay this is where I am things quickly changed. It was the resistance that hurt me and kept me from just getting with what needed to be done that day. This took getting to rock bottom and really hating myself before I had had enough.

With our situation now we can decide to embrace this and know that we will come out on the other side at some point.  We can feel grateful that we have be given an opportunity to help other people by sitting home instead of running around in a panic. Our mind says "do something" and it seems counter intuitive to just be at home with ourselves.

The next two weeks will be the worst of it as more people are tested the number of infections will go up. It isn't that they are rising it is just we will know about it. We have to limit our viewing of the news and occupy our minds with something productive or even something fun. We can't make time pass or see what the future holds we have to trust that we will make it through to the other side.