April
3, 2020
Today’s
idea – I want to follow a suggestion of looking at my situation through different
lenses. A macro lens magnifies my considerations of things, hopefully so that I
might notice what I’m overlooking. Peering through these eyes, I see life slow
down and seem more intentional with the extended solitude of quarantine. The introverted place in me is mostly fine
with this state of things, until the longings for companionship or just hanging
out with friends stirs up unruly emotions. These vex me because they take on
the old voice of negative self-talk. In
this head space I can turn normal feelings of missing my family, particularly
sons and granddaughters into an old loop of “they don’t mis me so much anyway
because I’m not around like most good grandmothers are.” I’ve even given myself a moniker, VAG, visiting
aunt grandmother. Somehow it makes me
feel less consequential but still adorable.
We live out our choices and our strokes of luck/good or bad. Here is a time to do the work on such old
unkind tendencies and habits, a gift of open opportunity. A time to not only tend to self-sabotaging
ideas but also sabotaged thinking handed down from my grandmother, passed implicitly
to me as the child who got to visit her only once or twice a year. Here is the
gift of uncongested days with only a frantic nine month old terrier worrying at
the window in between walks. With the
macro lens, I can notice how I move moment to moment temporarily on a simplified
stage. Even next week, only three days from now, as I commence my teaching albeit
remotely, I will move into the busier stream of interactions. Considering this,
it is best to relish the open and uncomplicated nature of life on April 3, 2020. Now to swap my view to the longer lens. How will I see this situation in six
months? Commencing a new school year, if
we haven’t totally fallen off the rails.
Who knows how the economic state of affairs will play out in this time? Americans pride themselves/ourselves as being
frontier pioneers. Well here is a dandy
wilderness for us to explore. What
values will hone our compass as we delve toward a new life design? Will we
remember to hold Brene Brown’s sage social tenets? Or keep counsel with the wise and fair political
minds of Warren, Chomsky, Carter, Obama? I read that the Chinese word for
change is made of two symbols, one for danger and one for opportunity. May we hold them, one in each hand. Danger to
move us to action and opportunity to call us to keen attention with
intention. The third lens is the wide
one to sweep up my thoughts, begging the questions: how are others managing now? And what other
factors are in play? Funny how this is
the lens I tended to pick up first. I
think I’ve chewed on those questions early on in early entries. The long lens questions intrigue me most
these days. How will we talk about this time two years hence?
Today’s
observation – 97.2° - that’s my temperature today and after a
week in quarantine with no fever or symptoms, I have been released. My
quarantine downgraded to sheltering in place. Tomorrow I’ve been conscripted to
pick up two students who spent their extended Spring Break at our satellite
campus. They were not keen to go at the
onset, and now they are not keen to return to their rooms here. Sometimes there is no pleasing some people.
Today’s
image – Ready but waiting – I’ve spent the last few days learning a new way to
be a teacher and recalibrating my classroom to a digital platform. We are using Microsoft Teams. Monday is showtime. I imagine that Murphy is perched and ready to
bugger my carefully crafted launch.
Lucky for me that my students are so ready for something to distract them
from the wolves at the door and the hours of hovering over a video game or
movie between sleeps, that they will be the kindest of critics. Oh, see how the virtual frontier draws me in.
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