I haven’t written about the Coronavirus because we are hearing it everywhere else, all the time. There’s nothing more that I can say about it, except that it is a great cause for concern. It is scary, in part, because we don’t know how it is going to affect us. From the latest prediction on the news last night, one of the specialists said it will likely infect 70% of the world population. Needless to say, that’s a huge gonging alarm. So we wait. And we see.
Two things came up about life as I was writing that little intro. The first part started when we were kids. All of us. The scariest things were the unknown. We never actually saw the monster in the story we were hearing. It never came to our door. It may have been the demon in the book, the werewolf in the movie, the beast in the TV show. At night, when the lights went off, the window slightly open, the closet door ajar, the dark space under the bed — all those things looming. So we pulled our covers up to our eyes, and we shivered, waiting to see those monsters creep out of the shadows. Eventually, we closed our eyes, and fell asleep, and dreamed of golden rolling hills where lollipops grew in bunches, tied with red licorice strings.
But, it was the fear of the unknown, the thing we couldn’t see, that scared us the most. And then we grew into adults, and for many of us, this is still the scariest thing. The monsters have changed, but not what they represent. Most of the time, we simply do what we need to do, and in the morning, we find, it was mostly all okay.
The second thing that came to mind, was that “we wait, and we see.” It goes hand in hand with being afraid of the unknown. Often times, the seeing part isn’t as bad as the waiting was.
But we don’t have to be idle while we wait. We can do other things. Things that are good, and that we enjoy. It might be taking a walk in the woods, playing our favorite games on our iPads, visiting a museum, having a cookie, seeing a movie, reading a book. Whatever it is that gives us joy. If we are worrying, we can try to find a thing that makes us happy, in the moment, right here and right now.
I’m not sure how old I was. But, one night I was sure that Dracula was coming. I snuck down into the kitchen and got my Mom’s little shaker bottle of garlic salt, and a handful of my Dad’s toothpicks. I tied a bandana around my neck, sprinkled the garlic salt on myself in bed, and placed the toothpicks on my nightstand for my best attempt at wooden stakes. When I woke that next morning, I was certain my planning was the thing that had kept Dracula away. If nothing else, it made me feel much better as I went to sleep.
We should all be clever today, and do exactly what it is — that each one of us needs to do — to feel good about the day.
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“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
― Aristotle
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“He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.”
― Confucius
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“You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.”
― Colette
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