“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” -William Arthur Ward

Putting your head in the sand and complaining won’t make this virus go away. The virus is patient and will wait you out.

Blaming the country where it started won’t create a vaccine and help you go back in time.

Be a good citizen and listen to the experts. Ignoring doctors and medical guidance will endanger yourself and others.

Look after yourself, have a good cry, get angry, vent, and comfort others, but don’t panic and freeze like a deer in the headlights.

Make the necessary adjustments to your life and then get busy. The cure for anxiety is action.

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Invictus
William Ernest Henley – 1849-1903

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

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“Sometimes,” Michael Kinch, from Washington University in St Louis explained to me, “the immune system gets so ramped up that it brings out all its defenses and fires all its missiles in what is known as a cytokine storm. That’s what kills you. Cytokine storms show up again and again in many pandemic diseases, but all in things like extreme allergic reactions to bee stings.” – The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson.

Closing borders, shutting down commerce, grounding airlines, and restricting physical contact during Covid-19 is a country’s equivalent of a cytokine storm. We need to do these things to save lives, but if the lockdown reaction is too prolonged and too severe, then the response to the virus might be what ends up killing us in the long run. Zero trade and zero commerce will lead to civil unrest, famine, and war.

I think helpers will appear in the coming months. These people will be immune to the virus because they have survived and developed antibodies. Serology tests would be ideal. These immune helpers could get issued digital tattoos that give them access to markets and commerce. Over time these helpers will grow in numbers and rekindle the economy while protecting the at-risk untouched population who are sheltering in place.

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I wonder if there will be public holidays to honor the teachers, medical professionals, food workers, Grocery clerks, cashiers, delivery drivers, and warehouse stockers. These are the people who are putting their lives on the line every day to keep us alive as we seek shelter in our homes.

I think in the future, we’ll hear phrases like “Thank you for your service” and “Thank you for your sacrifice” when learning that someone was a teacher, nurse, delivery driver during the pandemic.

People have short term memories, and I’m sure the sacrifices of 2020 will be forgotten. That’s why war memorials are erected, and special ceremonies are held. Heroes are commemorated every year so that people don’t forget and don’t repeat the same mistakes.

My school in South Africa has a gray stone war memorial that is full of engraved names of the boys who died in the First and Second World War. The war memorial guards a grassy quad where the school gathers every year for the November 11th Memorial Service.  

At the end of the service, the headmaster reads the famous and sad verse from Laurence Binyon’s The Fallen:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

Everyone then repeats the final line: We will remember them.

I hope we remember the essential service workers of Covid-19 2020. I hope we pay them more, I hope we look after their families, I hope we are kind to them when things get busy again.

One of the ways to honor them is to pay more for something because it’s made locally by people we trust and people we can rely on. We are in this mess because we outsourced our manufacturing and labor to the cheapest bidder without caring about whether we share the same values when the pressure is on. Now we know the real cost, and it’s a lot more expensive.

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I took the boys for a walk this evening. We needed to burn off some energy after being cooped up the whole day.

Every evening at dusk I usually see the A380s and Dreamliners, fully laden with fuel and luggage slowly gaining altitude as they head out across the Pacific. The setting sun reflects off the tail-wing, so it was easy to spot the airline. Most of them are heading to the US for an overnight flight. I like to imagine all the passengers settling in for the long haul flight. The headphones and blankets are all wrapped in plastic. The seatbelt sign is on, so people are browsing in-flight entertainment, peering out the windows. The atmosphere in the cabin feels new, exciting, and full of hope.

I looked up this evening and realized that there were no planes in the sky. Not one. The international flights are grounded. Waiting just like us.

It’ll be good to see their glinting tail wings up there again.

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Let’s stop calling it Social Distancing. Maybe we should call it Body Distancing or Contact Distancing. I’m more digitally and socially connected to my friends and family than I’ve been in a long time. We are all checking in with each other daily.

The conversations are roller coasters. We share quarantine jokes, and then it’ll swing to an article about medical supply shortages. It’s just part of the new way we connect and converse across closed borders and countries. Thank goodness for WhatsApp and FaceTime.

When we are on the other side of this thing, we will have some new digital social muscles to flex, and of course, a new appreciation for a good hug when we see the people we love in the flesh.

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Yesterday morning I woke up in my son’s bed. I’d found my way there sometime during the night. At 1am in the morning, he called for his mother, but she was already in the other room with his sick brother, who was nursing a cough. I appeared at his door and was initially told to get lost because he wanted his mom. It’s a little like turning up at the airport and asking for an upgrade – his mom is the business class upgrade, and I am the economy seat at the back of the plane next to the toilet. Everyone wants business class, I get it. I calmly explained to him that I was all he could get, and as I turned around to leave, he decided to take the trade and told me to climb in.

I woke up with him, curled up next to me, and fast asleep. I couldn’t tell the time, but I knew it was a bit later than usual and decided to stay still so not wake up the house. Sleeping in with young kids is rare. In that brief moment, I forgot about all the craziness in the world – closed borders, shelter in place, the sad stories coming out of Italy, talk of recession, and depression. Then it hit me like a wave, and I thought, “oh, I remember now, all of this shit is happening, and it’s real.” I felt my chest tighten up and looked for my phone. Time to go.

I made a cup of tea and walked into the back garden. It was a dead still morning, the sun was up and warm. I stood out there for a bit and felt the grass under my feet. The moment of normalcy gave me a lump in my throat. I think it was the act of appreciating the simpleness of the warm sun and the quiet of the morning. The earth whispered to me and told me she’d been here all the time and I could come back anytime I want to.

‘I have conversed with the spiritual sun. I saw him on Primrose Hill.’ – William Blake

When things get a bit crazy, I think about the Redwood Groves just north of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. There’s a grove of trees just outside of Mill Valley that I sometimes go to in my mind. If I stand in the middle and look up at the branches above, they form a roof that looks just like a cathedral ceiling. It’s the right place to ground myself and settle down. 

The tree rings of Redwoods that have been standing for hundreds of years tell us stories about climate change, drought, floods, and other significant changes to the earth. For years everything is normal, and then there’s an event that causes changes in the flow. 2020 is a year that our human tree of civilization will see a bump in the ring. I wonder what the future patterns will look like after that. 

My kids get agitated if I check my phone when I’m spending time with them. They’ll try and grab my phone and do other naughty things to distract me. My solution is to put the phone in another room and keep it away from all of us so I won’t be tempted.

Yesterday evening I was cleaning up the back garden. Raking leaves, sweeping away dirt and pulling weeds out of the gaps between the paving. It was pretty therapeutic work, I got some fresh air at the end of the day and helped me decompress after sitting behind a screen. I noticed that my kids were soon outside with me playing quietly together and not asking for my attention. They do the same thing if we go to the park on a Sunday afternoon and I bring a ball along to play some solo basketball. If I take my phone out, then their mood changes immediately. I think both gardening and basketball is about being with them in the moment and being present. They get it, and they give me space.

It’s a delicate balance sometimes. The kids get to pass the time with me, and I get to relax and decompress. The silent truce is that there’s no phone!

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Do not go gentle into that good night 

Dylan Thomas – 1914-1953

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.