Subtitle: Keeping Your Sh!t Together When the World is Falling Apart
I’ve been thinking about how it seems like the pandemic and resulting stay-at-home orders feel like being grounded by Mother Nature. Maybe she’s saying something like, “Hey humans, go to your rooms and think about what you’ve done.” With climate change, pollution, raging wild fires and drought, monster storms, and the recent looming interruption of the food supply chain, I’m feeling globally unsettled. So today, on Earth Day 2020, I’m reminded once again that my presence on this planet is substantially irrelevant.
While my problems seem huge in my little corner of the world, they don’t matter at all to Planet Earth. I’m trying to launch a writing career while our economy is falling apart. My kids hate distance learning. Our summer camps, concerts, and vacations have all been called off. Basically, summer is canceled.
We feel trapped, we want our creature comforts back, our home has gone from a respite to a place of comfortable confinement. Yes, we are lucky and soooooo privileged to have a home, food, and at least one salary to pay the bills. We know this and are extremely grateful.
Scarcity
To remember to be grateful, I periodically remind myself of our good fortune. But I also need to see some silver lining between the COVID-19 clouds. For one bright spot, I remind myself that our family is learning to waste less. In the spirit of Earth Day, I’d like to point out a few examples of this conservation. We are striving to use leftover food, containers, boxes, and even yard debris and food waste for better purposes. Making art with leftover cardboard and magazines, composting yard and food waste, and planning meals more carefully regarding ingredients we have or can get. I will strive to include these new habits as long-term positive lessons for our entire family.
Here are just a few resources on how to be less wasteful and more efficient with family resources when times are tight.
- How to Shop Safely and Eat Well During the Coronavirus Pandemic, By Aurora Meadows, Nutritionist and Monica Amarelo, Senior Director of Communications, Environmental Working Group
- Is it Ethically Okay to Get Food Delivered Right Now?, Joe Pinsker, The Atlantic
- 23 Organizations Eliminating Food Waste During COVID-19, Ecowatch.com
- 5 Ways to Stay Environmentally Conscious During a Pandemic, FamilyHandyman.com
- Single-use plastic and COVID-19: How to stay eco-friendly in Seattle during the pandemic, Callie Craighead, SeattlePI.com
Basically, I remind myself that although we may not be able to find the bread we like best or a favorite kind of soup, this inconvenience is obviously not scarcity. We have an embarrassment of food and other household supplies. Just because we may not have the exact item we want exactly when we want it does not qualify as scarcity at all. Clearly, my family needed that reminder to be grateful for what we *do* have.
Simplicity
The converse of worrying about scarcity could be viewed as embracing simplicity. Chalk drawing and wildflower spotting on family dog-walks have replaced more consumptive activities. Movies around the TV and air-popped popcorn have replaced trips to local theaters. Planting and caring for our garden has become a common afternoon pastime.
At the same time we miss our friends and family and mourn our summer vacation plans, we are trying to enjoy the extra downtime. The kids are connecting with friends and cousins online. They have mastered riding their bikes in the cul de sac. The grown ups are baking things, brewing things, and growing things. We are all catching up on our backlog of selected books and movies. I wrote about my entertainment choices in an earlier post.
I acknowledge that we are so lucky to have this time and access to so many comforts of modern life. But we are also facing the anxiety of the unknown, the fear of losing loved ones, and the sadness of missing out on summer plans. To me, it feels like balancing on a tightrope where one side is despair and the other is gluttony with a side of sloth. We manage the outbursts and tantrums (from both children and parents) with as much patience and kindness as we can muster. And we hope that we are striking a balance that will get us through.
