Hair On Fire

Buddha said we should approach practice (such as meditation and mindfulness) as if our hair was on fire…meaning, with a sense of urgency.

Well, during this pandemic I feel like my hair is on fire everyDAY about everyTHING. Everything feels urgent and overwhelming….everything is an issue right NOW! Preparing for school at home…preparing kids for school at home (that’s much harder and even more urgent)…kids believing their lives are ruined by online school…trying to maintain some safe social contact for them, so they can have healthy relationships and so no one loses their mind…although I may have already lost mine…and so far it is nowhere to be found.

Maybe a pandemic is naturally a hair on fire thing. It’s hard to imagine that you could look at the pandemic and remain calm…maybe some people can…I am not one of them. I consider myself a pretty calm person…well I did…as recently as February of this year…beginning of March even.

I had a boss who used to say, “Let’s not go crazy here” when something big was happening. I worked in child protection, so things were frequently urgent and easy to go crazy over…even before I had gathered all the information I needed to understand the situation I could freak out.

Now if I’m not going to “go crazy here” what am I going to do? I feel anxious and agitated all the time. I don’t bite my nails but if I did they’d be bitten down to my knuckles. I feel anxious…restless…uncomfortable…on edge.

I generally believe that if I worry and fret about something enough then nothing bad will happen…I call it “anticipatory worry”…I like to get a head start. So I worry about my grandkids, and our adult kids. I worry about my friends and their kids. I worry about the state of the nation and the 190,000+ people who have died from coronavirus…and all of their family and friends. I worry about the continuing racial inequality and injustice. Protesters being shot while peacefully protesting. A black father being shot in the back 7 times while attempting to get into his car…and all of that in front of his three young sons…seriously?! Why do we even need to discuss how immoral that is…why don’t authorities take decisive action? How do we trust a police force where that shooting is considered good policing? How do we label that a police education or training problem and not a racism problem? Why do we focus on the violence and looting of a few and ignore the 1000’s of people peacefully protesting?

So much loss and so much grief…there is just so much to worry about…so many things to fear…so many choices available for anxiety…and I tend to choose them all.

There’s a low boiling anger that undergirds everything I do…it’s always there…a restless energy looking for expression. I am trying to express it constructively but sometimes I just want to scream, “Are you fucking kidding me?!”

With the anger there’s a fatigue…and exhaustion…hearing the same lies and justifications for abhorrent behavior…weariness that nothing seems to change…despair…despair…despair.

Maybe all my running around with my hair on fire is fueled by the need to grieve. We have lost so much personally and as a country. Amidst all the death and loss and change we’re experiencing, we need leaders who will lead us to breathe, open to the pain, and grieve….there is an overwhelming amount to grieve.

We have lost over 190,000 lives in this country because of COVID-19. We have lost 100’s of 1,000’s of jobs. People are facing the loss of their homes due to lack of income. Children and families are going hungry…people are facing food insecurity in growing numbers. Black people are being murdered by police officers…123 lives violently taken so far this year. Brown and black people are disproportionally impacted by the pandemic. Children are unable to go to school or play with their friends…without masks and social distancing. Children are sad and stressed. Adults are sad and stressed. We are experiencing fear, sadness, stress, confusion, rage, and loss in record amounts…perhaps like never before.

I believe we need to grieve as a nation. Since our leaders have not, I am calling for a national day of mourning…actually a week of mourning. In the Jewish religion when a death is experienced you sit shiva for 7 days…it can be 3 days but we definitely need 7…at least.

In the Hebrew bible, when Job lost his family, home and possessions and he was mourning, his friends came and sat with him for 7 days…as I recall that story, his friends were not that helpful…so be careful who you sit with.

Job and his friends sat on the ground together mourning for 7 days. If you happen to be like me, sitting on the ground is out of the question…if I get on the floor I will have to live on the floor. I don’t think where or how you sit matters nearly as much as that you actually do sit….you stay, and you sit.

Shiva means 7 for the 7-day formalized mourning period for the deceased. Shiva is observed for a parent, sibling, child, or spouse…we have lost all of those people in the last couple months.

Mirrors are covered to remind us that this time is not about us, it’s a time to concentrate on the deceased. Mourners come to the house to offer condolences…we need others to help us…and we need to help others heal. We are not designed to do everything on our own. We need each other.

The purpose of shiva is to provide a time for spiritual and emotional healing…7 days set aside for emotional and spiritual healing in order to lead us back to life. What a beautiful ritual…because we need to mourn, and we need to live.

I am not Jewish, and I am no expert on Jewish rituals, but I do think we can take the attitude of sitting shiva from this beautiful tradition.

I am searching for ways to make meaning out of what is happening in our lives, communities, country, and world. I believe that taking the attitude of shiva could help to move us through a very dark, painful, and confusing time in our country.

We are experiencing death in our society as we have never known, with the exception of war. We will be forever changed by COVID-19 and the impact it has had on our country. And we are forever changed by the murders of innocent black people by the police…we are changed because we have begun to really understand that black lives matter…we have begun to see what we should have seen decades, even centuries, ago…we live in a society that was founded on a racist structure and the belief that some people are worth more than others…that a white males life is worth more than any other life.

So here’s the thing…we are running around with our hair on fire not because of a sense of urgency to deepen our meditation practice or to be more mindful but because we have not had an outlet for the pain and the grief we are experiencing. Rushing here and there, not with a healthy yearning for growth and understanding, but because we don’t know what to do with ourselves…or each other…we’re like overtired toddlers running around, hitting our friends, plugging our ears, and screaming that we aren’t tired, when all we need is to embrace our feelings and sleep…close our eyes and rest.

We cannot grieve if we don’t know what we’ve lost. We cannot let go of something until we fully embrace it and understand what it means to us…and so we sit…not to avoid our grief but to fully experience it.

Before we go crazy here let’s take some time, 7 days, and grieve. Let’s feel our feelings. Sit with them as we do with someone who has died.

Let’s show ourselves, and other, some compassion…we’re all having a hard time.