"It's just a game."
"I'm not saving lives, just serving coffee."
"Why don't you get a real job?"
It's hard to argue against logic. A person's life is more important than a basketball game. Doctors do save more lives than servers do. There will always be an easier path to making a living than the starving artist route.
It's true that we don't need sports, dine-in restaurants, conferences, entertainment events, and social gatherings to survive. Technically we only need food, water, and shelter, and the money to pay for these things. A network of loved ones helps, too.
But when life becomes about just the essentials, like it has with the spread of the coronavirus, logic doesn't have as much of a leg to stand on.
I was gutted when the NCAA basketball tournament was canceled. My evenings feel empty without Jazz games.
And while the countrywide quarantine is basically an introvert's dream come true—stay home? I was born for this!—I miss having the camaraderie of coworkers. I was already between jobs/working from home for five or six weeks before everything was canceled and was very much looking forward to face-to-face workplace interaction again. Got two days of it, and then was banished back home indefinitely. Since I live alone, I likely won't talk to a human being in real life until Sunday when I go to my parents' house for home-based church.
All of these non-essential things are feeling pretty important right now. When the world is chaos and nothing feels normal, you need an escape from reality more than ever. But the escapes many of us have relied on to complement our normal lives are no longer available to us.
Only time will tell if we overreacted to the coronavirus or we averted a deadly crisis. But right now, the prevention feels like it's hurting more people than it's protecting. I understand the importance of protecting our vulnerable populations and know we should continue to do so, but we're all missing something right now—because of a virus. My heart goes out to those who aren't getting the income they need right now. To those whose dreams have been shattered because of a pandemic no one understands. To those who are extra stressed because there are fewer things to turn to to help manage that stress.
The shallow things matter. They help transform us from living husks to human beings. They bring us together, give us something to share.
So check up on your neighbors with one of the many virtual tools we're blessed with. Stop hoarding toilet paper. Read a Harry Potter book. Stream a forgotten classic on Disney+. Buy a gift card from a local business. And when there are no more restrictions on public gatherings, show some appreciation for those who live off-the-beaten-path lives so we can be entertained. Enjoy the freedom of being able to hang out with people, even if you hate crowds.
Things suck right now. But life will be extra sweet when we get the missing pieces of our lives back.
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Hope vs. despair
"Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom."
–Doctrine & Covenants 88:118
It's not a shocking revelation that the scripture above is one of my favorites. Literature exists so we can learn about ourselves. We write things down to document what we've learned.
Which is why I want to start writing about nuggets of wisdom I find in books I read, as a sporadic feature on this blog. It's not like I ever talk about books, anyway.
And since I opened this post with a scripture, I thought I'd kick off this series with a book many consider to be scripture: The Return of the King.
The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy explores hope and despair, but it's illustrated most beautifully in Book V after the Battle of Pelennor Fields. It's the calm before the real battle starts, a battle that makes Pelennor Fields and Helm's Deep look like warm-up games. They know what's coming because the Palantir has shown them what would appear to be their doom.
Denethor takes this information and despairs. He saw what Mordor was about to throw at them and came to the logical conclusion that humanity could not possibly overcome such odds—and gave up. He justifiably assumed that the only choice left to him was when/how he would die. So he died by fire before the bad guys could take him.
Aragorn and Gandalf saw exactly what Denethor did and came to the same conclusion: we can't beat these guys. But instead of succumbing to despair, they chose to have hope that perhaps not all was lost. Perhaps they just weren't seeing the entire picture. So they drew the armies of Mordor out, that massive army they knew they couldn't defeat, for the sliver of hope that it would help Frodo destroy the ring of the enemy and the source of his power.
We all know how it ends. Frodo succeeds, the world is saved. All because of hope.
I've gotten a lot more cynical as I've gotten older. One side effect being that I've started to view hope as a useless emotion. Hoping for the best is not a plan. Saying "hopefully" before the thing you want will not make it happen. The hope you feel about any given situation will not spontaneously change said situation.
Despite Denethor being the Worst Dad Ever™, I sympathize with him more than I ever have. He gave up when he knew he couldn't win—isn't that the smart thing to do? What can man do against such reckless hate, after all?
Movie Aragorn has the answer: Ride out and meet it.
The king is here to remind us that that's the moment hope changes from a useless emotion to an action. Being hopeful about a situation may not change it, but your actions can. Even a fool's hope can change how you react to a challenge or setback—and as we see with Frodo's quest, that makes all the difference. The Lord of the Rings trilogy would have had an ending similar to Denethor's if Aragorn and Gandalf had chosen to act on their despair rather than their hope.
It's much easier to let despair dictate our actions. You're much less likely to be disappointed that way. But the changes that needs to happen in our world will only happen if we allow hope to drive our decisions.
–Doctrine & Covenants 88:118
It's not a shocking revelation that the scripture above is one of my favorites. Literature exists so we can learn about ourselves. We write things down to document what we've learned.
Which is why I want to start writing about nuggets of wisdom I find in books I read, as a sporadic feature on this blog. It's not like I ever talk about books, anyway.
And since I opened this post with a scripture, I thought I'd kick off this series with a book many consider to be scripture: The Return of the King.
The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy explores hope and despair, but it's illustrated most beautifully in Book V after the Battle of Pelennor Fields. It's the calm before the real battle starts, a battle that makes Pelennor Fields and Helm's Deep look like warm-up games. They know what's coming because the Palantir has shown them what would appear to be their doom.
Denethor takes this information and despairs. He saw what Mordor was about to throw at them and came to the logical conclusion that humanity could not possibly overcome such odds—and gave up. He justifiably assumed that the only choice left to him was when/how he would die. So he died by fire before the bad guys could take him.
Aragorn and Gandalf saw exactly what Denethor did and came to the same conclusion: we can't beat these guys. But instead of succumbing to despair, they chose to have hope that perhaps not all was lost. Perhaps they just weren't seeing the entire picture. So they drew the armies of Mordor out, that massive army they knew they couldn't defeat, for the sliver of hope that it would help Frodo destroy the ring of the enemy and the source of his power.
We all know how it ends. Frodo succeeds, the world is saved. All because of hope.
I've gotten a lot more cynical as I've gotten older. One side effect being that I've started to view hope as a useless emotion. Hoping for the best is not a plan. Saying "hopefully" before the thing you want will not make it happen. The hope you feel about any given situation will not spontaneously change said situation.
Despite Denethor being the Worst Dad Ever™, I sympathize with him more than I ever have. He gave up when he knew he couldn't win—isn't that the smart thing to do? What can man do against such reckless hate, after all?
Movie Aragorn has the answer: Ride out and meet it.
The king is here to remind us that that's the moment hope changes from a useless emotion to an action. Being hopeful about a situation may not change it, but your actions can. Even a fool's hope can change how you react to a challenge or setback—and as we see with Frodo's quest, that makes all the difference. The Lord of the Rings trilogy would have had an ending similar to Denethor's if Aragorn and Gandalf had chosen to act on their despair rather than their hope.
It's much easier to let despair dictate our actions. You're much less likely to be disappointed that way. But the changes that needs to happen in our world will only happen if we allow hope to drive our decisions.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)