As a programmer this used be the beginning of a new lesson in a language I was introduced to. It may be equally valid today. I am learning a language called social distancing. We are in a pandemic. There is a virus that is highly transmittable, fatal for the vulnerable, and incurable at the time I'm writing this. And because of the uncertainty of how this can incapacitate a medical system, the world, my city, and my community are practicing social distancing.
I love it. I have noticed how the simplicity that isolation, self quarantine, or what I might reframe as gifted solitude, liberates me from the obligations that modern living teases me with. My introvert is nurtured. I am respectful of the anxiety of being alone can create. I am around plenty of loved ones to feel fulfilled. I get plenty of fresh air to feel replenished. I have plenty of funds and resources to feel sustained. I rarely leaned into luxuries and not even my coffee skills help me feel like I haven't even lost my gourmet caffeine addiction. I feel blessed amid this tragedy.
I walked into my daughter's rooms and straddled the thresholds to their entrances and asked them to recall the book we read together at bedtime about Anne Frank. I invited them to put into perspective the juxtaposition with what we are living and what she might have had to. I asked them to consider how much more extreme her conditions where. I asked them because I recognize how far worse the plague of human ignorance can be. I respect the cosmic existence of this virus. I take time to visit the through segments reported on the realities of this virus' bite.
I try and sympathize with the sadness that COVID-19 brings to families. I work really hard to transcend the politics around health care, the economy, and partisanship. I am glad I feel encouraged to write in these times. I want the World to know that quarantine can be a gift of solitude, and paradoxically I respect how antagonizing being forced to turn off your human connections can be. I am grateful to my ex-wife for loving so deep at one point in my life, it forced me to suffer the loneliness that I feel gives me to fortitude to appreciate the isolation I am asked to practice now. I am reminded of my grandmother, reminiscing on how she would tell me that she was happiest in her home.
My grandma, I am beginning to understand how home is joy, and isolation is not so much a restriction but a gift of solitude.
