Creative Rebellion Essays: Love in the Time of Coronavirus
The shared journey. Photo by Audrey Caldwell
Everything is borrowed. Our time. Our possessions. Our lives.
Everything is in a constant state of change. We come into being from the confluence of sperm and egg then evolving to fetus then to baby then to adolescence into adulthood into middle age and, if you’re lucky, old age and finally the transition back into the great unknown from which we first sprang.
Your actual odds of even existing at all are almost zero.
It all happens so slowly that we don’t think of it until we see a photograph of ourselves and think, who is that person? And then, with a jolt, we realize how fast time is going by.
Humans like stability for obvious reasons. Routines are comforting and you can often accomplish much by systematizing your day: the morning ritual of breakfast, then the commute, then work, lunch, more work, maybe a workout and then home for dinner. But this is an overlay of a human system on a world that has its own rhythms and is, for the most part, indifferent to our timelines and needs. We are sometimes reminded of this when an earthquake strikes or fires threaten our homes or in the most current and pressing case, our lives are at risk because of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus. In all of these cases, our routines are disrupted and what is truly important in our lives comes to the fore.
The Stoics, (thinkers like Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius and philosopher Seneca the Younger), differentiated between romantic love in which one is controlled by desire versus love in which one truly appreciates and loves who one is with and what one has.
For instance, a man obsessed by the love for a young woman might do embarrassing, irrational things. As Epictetus wrote, “Unhappy man, who are the slave even of a girl… Why then do you still call yourself free?” The passions Epictetus describes here are of the unruly lustful type that the Stoic philosopher Arius Didymus refers to when speaking of “excessive impulses which are disobedient to reason.” Many of Seneca’s essays are about the blinding grief that one feels at the loss of a loved one—whether by distance or by death. But he’d return to love as the way to move forward in grief and not get overwhelmed by the heavy emotions of grief: “You have buried someone you loved. Now look for someone to love. It is better to make good the loss of a friend than to cry over him.”
– From The Daily Stoic
The Stoics were known for loving their wives and children and were not indifferent to their feelings. The strength they derived was from thinking through the worst-case scenarios in any situation and radically accepting it. Once you truly acknowledge the worst-case, without fear or panic, then you can move forward. Of course, it doesn’t take away the immediate sting or pain of the worst-case actually happening in the moment but it does fortify the mind and spirit to take the hit, as it were.
When things go awry, we tend to hunker down. Which, in the case of COVID-19, is sound advice to do physically. But mentally, it’s good to take this time to think macroscopically – now that your daily routine and life has been disrupted and there is an existential threat to life, what is (a) the worst-case-scenario for you and (b) what is truly important to you?
In a way, this reminds of me of the scene in Fight Club where Tyler Durdan (Brad Pitt) holds a gun to Raymond K. Hessel’s head and demands that he tells him what he really wanted to be in life. The poor convenience store clerk cries and admits that he wanted to be a veterinarian. Durden finally lets him go, saying:
“So, I said, go back to school. If you wake up tomorrow morning, you find a way to get back into school.
I have your license.
I know who you are. I know where you live. I'm keeping your license, and I'm going to check on you, mister Raymond K. Hessel. In three months, and then six months, and then a year, and if you aren't back in school on your way to being a veterinarian, you will be dead...
Raymond K. K. Hessel, your dinner is going to taste better than any meal you've ever eaten, and tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of your life.”
For me, what is important, and has always been, is my family. We are spending time making art together, writing, watching movies and taking hikes. We are thinking about what’s important for us and we are staying stoically optimistic during these unprecedented times.
Just yesterday, we lost a family member. Not to Coronavirus but to a type of blood cancer. So, what I’m writing about aren’t just theoretical convictions – it’s applied philosophy, happening in real-time. It’s made me much more grateful for the “now” and what we have, rather than what we lack.
Life is in flux. It’s best to be in a state of flow and appreciation, without too much attachment to what should be. Rather try to adopt a radical acceptance of what is. Then we can adjust and bend with the times, rather than trying to impose our internal construct of what should be onto a reality that, again, doesn’t care much for our personal opinions.
So, love the ones you are closest to. Practice radical kindness. Nerves and exhaustion will play heavily on all of us and the more we extend kindness towards each other and towards strangers and neighbors we see in the grocery store (at a safe distance of six feet or more), the better it will be for all of us.
More than anything, perhaps this global pandemic will help to finally get us to realize that beyond religious or political affiliations, we are one human race. And the chances for all of us, collectively, to be here is again, almost zero. All we need to do is work as one and we will get through this and any other future challenges. And working as one has always been the biggest challenge humanity has faced.
And also remember, we don’t really own anything or anyone. We don’t own this earth. It’s all just on loan to us for the briefest of moments.
Stay safe and be kind.
John
What I’m reading:
The title of this essay is in reference to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s masterpiece on romantic love, Love in the Time of Cholera. Highly recommend reading it as it’s also a meditation on life and deferred dreams. I read it in college and, along with A Hundred Years of Solitude, it changed how I saw the world; something all great literature and art does.
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk – rereading this. Tight, existential but ultimately comical and redemptive writing. If you’ve only seen the movie, I recommend checking out the source material. It’s a short book but terse and a page-turner.
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