May 22, 2021
I hope you've had a chance to listen to the second episode, "Compare-Despair". If you have, I wonder if you could relate..? Perhaps?
Things on the pandemic front continue to shift for all of us. Since creating that episode, I personally have had the privilege of receiving 2 shots of Moderna in my arm. I (rather strongly) feel both fortunate and dutiful to have participated in the process of inoculation against this biological foe that has claimed so many lives. In our country, the internet told me, more than World War II, Korea and Vietnam combined..? This comparison struck me as painful, yet complicated.
As one news source put it, “The reason we want to compare covid-19 deaths to [war casualties] is not just because the numbers are there, but to acknowledge this is a significant rupture in society." Well, it is hard to argue with that. Meanwhile things are brightening somewhat. At least on the ground here in Los Angeles, life feels pretty different than it did 4 months ago.
But finding ourselves now in this slow process of recovery, it is a ripe opportunity for Judgement Mind to seep in. A prime example of this happened to me today while visiting remotely with family. I had the opportunity to watch my mind struggle not to drown in judgement when my relatives, who have opted not to get the vaccine, shared how they were dis-invited from a friend's birthday outing because of their choice. I watched my "meaning making factory" go berserk. I formed a snap judgement. Amazingly, I managed to keep it quiet. Then I noticed how subtly, but there it was, I liked how it felt to be so convicted. Still I took it slow. I managed to ask some questions, honest questions, not passive aggressive traps. Instead of giving orders, I tried to receive insight. But mostly, I managed (with my husband's help) to find the point of connection, the space that we all inhabited and felt, vaccinated or not--the rupture, the "significant rupture in society".
That same news source said of this past year, "It is going to create trauma: How are we going to deal with that? It’s part of our human condition to try to search for some reference points.” We're all a little broken by this. Whenever possible, it feels so much better to look for points that relate, rather than alienate. As our guest on Episode Two, Yoga Teacher and Buddhist Nina Snow, puts it clearly:
We are all just humans having a human experience.
Mara