Superhero-ing During Crisis: Tapping Ancient Wisdom
March 14, 2020

   
    My superhero cape has taken a beating in the last week.  It's looking a little muddied and wrinkled.  It might be time to run it through the washer, hang it to dry for a while, and touch it up with a little ironing love.

    This last week was going to be challenging for me under any circumstances.  In my law practice, I had deadlines for two major written filings, a significant hearing in a high-stakes probate, and a mediation for a very sad and difficult civil case, all scheduled for this week.  Also, the monthly meeting for the local education foundation was scheduled for this week as well, which meant I needed to both prepare for and lead that meeting.  Now, granted, these are all the tasks of someone who is very privileged.  I know that. #firstworldproblems, right?  I get it.  But normally, I am better about spreading out the major tasks that I am privileged to undertake in professional practice and community service.  I try to keep the "biggies" down to no more than one or two per week.  That's about all I have the bandwidth for.  Unfortunately, that was just not an option this week, so I had to pull up my big girl pants and don the cape faithfully and just charge through it all.

   In retrospect, I think I should have at least been more cognizant of the time change when I scheduled this week's events.  Last Sunday marked this year's  "leap forward" into so-called Daylight Savings Time.  I have dubbed the day of this annual change "the cruelest day of the year," what with the losing of the hour of sleep and all.  Every year, it takes me weeks to adjust and recover from this time change. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know we "get it back" in the fall.  And I know we "have more light in the evenings."  But you know what?  This #mommylawyer,  #gentlewomanfarmer, and #meditativewriter doesn't exactly want "more light in the evenings."  What I want is to make sure my kids and I get as much good sleep as possible, in order to keep our bodies and minds strong and healthy for the challenges we are privileged to address during normal daylight hours.  And this artificial Daylight Savings Time push doesn't exactly help with that – in fact, it is at odds with it, in my humble opinion.

    But in any case, rant aside, the time change made what was already teed up as a tough week even tougher.  And while I am not a superstitious person, I will note here as well that this week also featured both a full moon and a Friday-the-13th.  We'll call those the special sprinkles on this week's mud pie – psychological, if not actual, additions to the underlying mess.

   And then, there was – there is – coronavirus, specifically COVID-19.  This week witnessed the official designation of the spread of this virus as a global pandemic, and in the U.S., we witnessed a cascade of sports, college, and event closures, cancellations, and suspensions.  Oh, and the empty toilet paper shelves at retail stores have featured prominently in our media feeds, social and otherwise.  Forget mud pie.  This turned my week – and everyone else's – into lava cake.  And, as far as we know, this thing hasn't really erupted yet in the U.S., at the time of this writing.  Official public health warnings suggest we may just be witnessing the early sputters of a massive explosion – one that could leave me embarrassed at (or perhaps longing for) the tidy and mildly self-centered cuteness of my metaphors.

    Now, I don't conceive of this space as a place where I comment on current events.  This space is more about trying, through reflection on my own lived experience, to add something, however small and humble, to the world's store of wisdom literature.  The writer of Ecclesiastes is probably right, in a deep sense, to observe that "there is nothing new under the sun."  But even if that is true, even if the messages I seek to understand and articulate are (hopefully) ancient and enduring, I think each generation can give rise to new messengers, who repackage the old wisdom in ways that reveal it to be fresh, relevant, and very much alive.  That's what I'm trying to do here, however modestly and imperfectly.  

    So writing about current events does not figure into my project much, or . . . at all.  Wisdom is distilled over time and distance, so it is difficult, if not impossible, to see wisdom emerging from events as they unfold in real time.  

    That said, we sorely need to apply some ancient wisdom to events as they unfold in real time, and that need may require some comment from time to time.  

    So here's my comment for now: we don't know what's going on here, with COVID-19.  We don't know how this will play out and unfold.  We know there are a few people with a lifetime of professional experience and expertise in understanding how such viruses operate and spread, and we should, by all means, heed their advice about how to slow and reduce the spread of the virus.  We should make every effort to "flatten the curve" of the virus's movement among us, to decrease its potential toll on our friends, loved ones, and the healthcare system generally, by washing our hands frequently and thoroughly, staying home when we feel sick, and avoiding crowds and unnecessary travel (for now).

    But this is also a time to embrace and practice the true superhero ethic, an ethic rooted in ancient wisdom:  a deeper degree of humility, more genuine expressions of compassion, and greater comfort with the profound ambiguity that marks our lives at all times but which is more apparent in these current circumstances.  This is a time to learn to resist our impulse to shift responsibility off our own shoulders by pointing fingers of blame at others too quickly – a tendency that cuts us off from creative solutions that can emerge when we understand ourselves as players responsible for how this drama unfolds.

    My hope and my prayer is that we will take this opportunity to seek out, dig into, begin to practice the wisdom of the ages.  This might, in other words, be the best time to dust off, clean up, and put on your own superhero cape.