Arguing About Death in a Laundromat

It was funny, really, and later it brought to mind the article we had both read about the spike in divorce rates after the quarantine was lifted in China.

We had to venture out to the laundry. Harsh words were spoken after perceived carelessness. Then, escalation after a reconnaissance to the grocery.

We had been doing well up until then, enjoying the time sequestered and getting to spend time together in a way we rarely do. As two working musicians/managers, we often go for months without being in each others’ company. This serves to make time together feel rather precious. Thus the longevity, and the ease with giving the other plenty of autonomy.

Adding the outside world to our equation served to ignite a stress we’d each been feeling, and it all launched to the surface under the fluorescent lights.

I retreated to my own room after the flurry of door slamming and tantrum, and immediately started to see the levity in the whole thing. I didn’t feel so seemingly panicked about the possibility of contracting the virus. Why did I freak out?

When I looked at what drove me to cause such a huff, I saw it was glaringly about control. Somehow, being in the world reminded me of how little control I have over anything, over the ways things have changed so quickly and so drastically, so I lashed out at the only person I could.

I have spent nearly a lifetime in a deep study of change. I sit in meditation and I watch sensation move through my body, and the whole time a small knowing seems to be chanting a mantra, “what rises passes away. What rises passes away.” I see how my thoughts and emotions rise, culminate, and dissolve. I watch as my mind attaches to experience, and I train myself to let these attachments fall away.

There is a meditation I love in which I move through a process of letting go of everything: my loves, my work, my friends, my enemies, my personality, all the way down to my life. As I go through each item I watch what resists this release, and allow that resistance as well to rise and fall and let go.

So why was I freaking out at the Laundromat over an elbow touching a washing machine?

I guess I am susceptible to fear, just like everyone else. I read all the advice and then I think that I am the one who knows, and if someone doesn’t take my advice, then watch out. The fear rises, the possibility of the other person not taking care, the eventuality of getting sick, and I cause a big ruckus in a public place.

It’s just fear. So I sit in meditation and I ask, what am I afraid of? Certainly not death, since I’ve been through that over and over and have gotten pretty settled with that whole thing.

I see that I’m afraid of hurting someone else unintentionally, by getting ill and not knowing it. That is a big element here. Although, I seem to be fine to let my harsh words injure the person closest to me as I screech at him by the dryers.

I see that there is fear of a hassle. The hassle of being ill, of not being able to use this time to do all the things that I’ve been sinking into: writing and reading and exercising and playing drums. I don’t want things to change in a way that I don’t want.

So here it is again. The fear of change.

We’re all dealing with change in such a profound way. One day, life looks one way, the next, everything is so different. It feels that many people are going through a kind of grief over the loss of what they knew. I can’t imagine all of the trajectories that have been thwarted: love affairs and careers and financial plans and lives. It seems like everything stopped in mid-air, and we hang here in the unknown of what’s to come.

I find it easiest to see this time as a pause, as a postponement, but it does occur to me that maybe how I have lived will be permanently altered. Rather than just getting back to my life as a touring musician in a few months, same as always, maybe being a touring musician will stop being an option for a long time.

Really though, this is no different than how life has always been. Each moment we dive into the unknown, and in each moment lives the possibility of things altering, forever. Accident and illness, a change of mind, a sudden realization, and life can change so drastically. Permanence is forever a shaky illusion we hold on to so tightly.

Maybe the reason these events feel so profound is that everyone is experiencing this truth at the same time.

There are some, of course, who fight the tide with denial, but that will always be the case. There are some who rail against the new circumstance, let their anger at it consume them. There are some who do everything they can to make sure it feels like business as usual.

For most of us, it is a slow letting go. First of frustration, then anger. Then we fill up our days in anticipation of the resolution, and when we see it’s going on longer than we thought, we spin out for a while. Like the stages of grief, we go through these things and gradually come to realize that there is nothing to do but sit back and watch how life plays out.

What’s it like to move from moment to moment? We’re all finding out. We’re all finding out how we move in uncertainty and let go of our illusions of what is to come.

Once we stabilize in this, it can be so freeing. If we can find our way out of fear, acceptance of the truth of change is like flying. We don’t know what’s coming. The only way to handle it? We can be right here with what is, right now.

In the mornings, during my meditation, I ask to be released from fear. In When Fear Falls Away, Jan Frazier asked to be let go of the crippling fear around her cancer treatment, and in an instant, fear dissolved.

I used to think the reason I’d like to stop letting fear run my life was that it felt so bad to be afraid, and also that it was pointless – possibly wasted, if the feared thing never did materialize. But now that fear has packed its miserable bags and is running out the door, making slamming noises to call attention to itself, I begin to see how much room fear has occupied. What opportunity opens up!

This is what I’ve started to notice, that inside of my being is a recognition of opportunity in this experience.

First, I recognize the opportunity to come together in a real way with my friends and family, even though I don’t get to be with them in the flesh. I prioritize conversation in a new way.

I recognize the opportunity to see people like healthcare workers and people who work for our infrastructure as the heroes they are. I recognize that we are seeing how much we need each other, and how our individual actions directly impact everyone around us. I discover daily rituals in sending positive energy to those who help, those who struggle, and lifting the whole thing to a higher vibration.

Opportunities are playing out in the way we see the bigger structures of our society. Maybe the recognition of the need to care for each individual life is starting to become a reality. Opportunity to see the other as ourselves.

Opportunity to see the impact of our slowing down on the natural world. Opportunity to breathe the fresh city air at 3PM.

Opportunity to let go of distraction. Opportunity to let go of self-centeredness. Opportunity to let go of all the grasping. Opportunity to breathe.

Opportunity to be in this moment. And in this moment. And in this moment.

Opportunity to fall into our own fearless heart. Opportunity to let go of everything that keeps us from truly connecting with our collective heart.

Opportunity to amend and to be forgiven. Forgive yourself for letting fear rule you for a little while. Rise and apologize to the person you love for that time you were a maniac. Take this tremendous opportunity of time, time to lie arm in arm, listening to the birds making the most of the morning, as you watch how it all plays out.

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