Restaurant Dining Does Not Equal Living and 19 Other Truths I Wish You Knew About My Still Coviding Life
It’s been quite a week over on X/Twitter. The volume of mis/dis information seems to be increasing again, and I found my way into a few discussions that predictably originated in binary thinking.
As a result, I was reminded that so much of the resistance to our “still coviding verbs” centers around how we engage with food, not people! When we share our 'verbs,' the initial response often dismisses them as 'not living. ' But when I recounted the diverse range of activities our family enjoyed last weekend, from dancing at a wedding to hiking a mountain to whitewater rafting, I couldn't help but wonder: If these aren’t considered 'living', then what are they?
So I asked, and the response boiled down to food. “But I bet you didn’t eat at the wedding”. They were right. We left during the picture-taking and buffet, right in between the ceremony and the party. We hit a local drive-through for burgers, kicked off our heels and dress shoes for a few minutes, and experienced the side benefit of our little one being happily fed (which never would have happened with a fancy wedding buffet dinner). We were back on the dance floor before anyone missed us.
Here is the list of truths I would have shared with the wedding crowd, who were visibly perplexed by our simultaneous actions of living life while protecting it.
1. I am not hiding.
2. I am maintaining a healthy grasp on the type of fear that has enabled humanity to survive and evolve since time began. My fear is proactive and protective, not reactionary and defensive.
3. I am demonstrating intelligence (according to F. Scott Fitzgerald, at least) by living and protecting my life at the same time.
4. Pre-pandemic dining experiences at restaurants worldwide were a significant source of enjoyment in my life, and I miss it desperately. But restaurant dining does not equal living to me.
5. I live in the “excluded middle”- that’s the place where people who refuse the fallacy of making an either-or choice to “live like it’s 2019” or “lockdown again” hang out.
6. “Making Trade-offs” is not a term I use when the exchange for an unmasked/unmitigated experience is health and life. Rather, I actively choose to live with inconveniences rather than experience unchosen catastrophes (e.g., destroying my own or someone else’s health /life).
7. No, I don’t believe leaders, organizations, and institutions always have our best interests in mind and wouldn’t mislead us for their own gain. People prove themselves not by their titles or words but by their decisions, actions, and the outcomes they create.
8. No, I don’t believe I am smarter than those who are telling us it’s safe to be repeatedly infected. I am, however, clearly driven by different values, namely the refusal to accept binary thinking and the simplistic, abysmal outcomes it creates.
9. To label my fear as a maladaptive response or to say that faith should conquer it would mean that you expect me to ignore the disabling, life-ending impact I have personally witnessed in my own circle of family and friends and to ignore the mounting research on the dangers of reinfection. This is another false binary; for me, healthy fear guides my actions, AND faith guards my heart. Together they will lead me to the outcomes I desire regardless of what changes in the world writ large.
10. My fear is proactive and protective, not reactionary and defensive. (yep, repeating this one).
11. My health span is as important to me as my lifespan.
12. Masking and mitigating have not created new problems for my relationships; they may have exacerbated them, but they mostly just clarified unhealthy dynamics and boundary issues that predated the pandemic.
13. I define “living” as an individual and collective experience (e.g., it includes the impact of my decisions on Others, AND the meaning I make of my life is deeply personal and individual).
14. I define “living” as extending beyond the present moment. I am intertwined with the past and the future, and all my decisions create a legacy of one kind or another.
15. I operate with an internal frame of reference most of the time, and it has served me well in a timeline when the “powers that be” are engaging in mis/dis information and manipulating the masses.
16. The constraints and inconveniences I currently live with are directly linked to the freedoms I and my family will enjoy in the future.
17. I have had to drop old rules about life to adapt to what life requires now. That’s called evolving. (For example, the rule that hospitality must revolve around food had to go out the window to let people into my life).
18. My purpose in actively still coviding (which, in short, means living with the virus as a verb, not a noun or past event) isn’t to constrain my life or yours. My purpose is to live out my values with a healthy lifespan as long as is humanly possible; getting there means knowing when to close, constrain, protect, and shield and when to open, expand, invite, and engage. Timing really is everything in my life.
19. My mask isn’t the reason for our disconnection; that is a result of the othering, blaming, and politicization we have experienced in our culture for almost five years. But if you can’t accept my mask, will you accept my other differences, some of which are not visible to the naked eye?
20. My eyes are the windows to my soul, not my mouth. It doesn’t hide my heart, mind, and spirit, so if you can see and hear my truth, you will find me if you seek me.
P.S. I would love to hear some of your truths and responses to mine if you are willing to share in whatever way is most comfortable for you.