Daily Excerpt: Seeking Balance in an Unbalanced Time (Greenebaum) - A Family in Crisis

 

The following excerpt comes from Seeking Balance in an Unbalanced Time by Steven Greenebaum.

A FAMILY IN CRISIS

 

            Pandemic. For most of us, and I certainly include myself, the notion of a worldwide pandemic has been ripped out of the realm of the theoretical and dumped with a thud in our laps. What do we do? How do we cope? How on Earth do we cope? How do we even try to lead some version of normal lives when life is no longer normal? How can we find and keep some kind of balance as we walk this pandemic tightrope? These are tough, important questions – and we want answers. Living a life of uncertainty 24/7 can break our heart and our spirit. Everything seems out of balance, especially our lives. So, what do we do?

            The honest truth is, of course, there’s no one answer that solves this. There are so many different things for us to deal with as we try to keep our balance. What I’d like to do is offer what may be only a partial answer, but one I think we can hold onto. Speaking as a retired Interfaith minister, what I’ll ask us grapple with in the pages that follow is how we might deal with what can seem like an overwhelming challenge to our spiritual and emotional health. No, we can’t rid ourselves of the stress. But I do believe that by working to steady our equilibrium we can keep ourselves from being overwhelmed. Ok, fine! Just how do we find this emotional and spiritual balance? How do we deal with the uncertainties we face – the separations that confront us and the very real dangers that stare back at us in the night?

            For me, I’ve always found that tough problems are made at least a smidge easier by breaking them down into somewhat smaller pieces. I’d ask us to look at four of these pieces. The first is this chapter—the whole picture, if you will—looking at the pandemic, not as a personal crisis, nor a national crisis, but a family crisis, a crisis the whole of our human family faces.

            Our family? Really? Yes! We live in a hugely divisive time. You may have noticed. We divide by race, by religion, by ethnicity, by gender, and, with very firm lines on our maps, by nation. This COVID-19 pandemic recognizes none of these divisions; and for us right now, it’s particularly important to remember it respects no borders. A virus that started in China has made its way all over the world. And it may well again. What happens not only in the United States but in Africa, Europe, Russia, Asia, South America, indeed what happens everywhere should concern us not only because we are one with our human family, but because this virus ignores all borders. It may well leave and then come back.

            Okay, so the crisis is huge and involves all of humanity. Now what? Let’s leave politics for others to deal with. Surely there’s plenty of time and space for “the blame game” elsewhere. What I’d like to look at is, recognizing that this is indeed a crisis affecting the entirety of our human family, what do we do? What can you do? What can I do? What can the communities we live in do?

            I believe it is crucial for us to understand that a time of crisis does not define who we are. The pandemic does not define us. The truth of it is, it is in a time of crisis that our facades slip and we truly reveal ourselves. A time like this strips away our illusions. What we proclaim becomes meaningless. How we act is who we are. So, while we shelter in place or find ourselves outside of our home (at least from time to time), and then as we try to cope as the world slowly opens again, what we do or do not do will define not only who we are but also who we will be. A time of crisis strips away who we hope to be and leaves us alone with who we are. So, the question becomes, what action will we take? What will we do?

            That’s a hard one! The truth of it is, depending on how we say it, “What can I do?” can either be a cry of despair or a cry of empowerment. Truly. “What can I do?” is a cry of despair. The problem is so huge, we feel powerless. But “What can I do?” is a cry of empowerment. “I cannot do everything, but I can do something.” is a wonderful statement of empowerment from Rev. Edward Everett Hale (full quote in the Appendix).

            I believe one of the most important things we can do to keep our sanity and our spiritual balance is not allow ourselves to get lost in the crisis. And one of the best ways not to get lost is to embrace Rev. Hale’s approach to put aside regret about what we can’t do and embrace what we can. It has always helped me to think of what I can do in terms of cards that I am playing in a game. Whether it’s bridge, or poker, or some other card game, what truly matters are the cards we hold. Wishing we had a better hand is pointless. The cards we have are the only cards we can play. So, the question in this pandemic, as in all of life, is “What are my cards?”

            Now in my seventies, I’ve learned to enlarge the card analogy. There were things I could do when I was thirty that became a lot harder in my fifties, and are in truth no longer possible in my seventies. I think of me in my thirties as holding one set of cards. The cards I held in my fifties were different. The cards that I hold now are very different. As we play our hands in this game of life, whatever the stage of our lives, what matters is our answer to the question: “What cards do I hold now?” It’s very human to mourn cards that we could once play but no longer hold, or cards we wish we had but don’t. I’ve done it. More than once I’ve mourned the cards I don’t have, but never have I found it to be helpful. Isn’t asking, “What cards can I play?” more positive and spiritually rewarding than, “What cards have I lost?”

            It’s up to each one of us to determine how to play the hand we’ve been dealt. So, I wouldn’t dream of trying to tell you how you should play your hand. But whatever our hand, we are so much freer to play the cards we have when we aren’t distracted by frustration over the cards we don’t (though this in no way means we shouldn’t work to improve the hands our children will have!). And if someone we know has “better” cards, let him or her play them. We’ll play the cards we’ve got. And if we keep our balance, we can play them to the very best of our ability.

            Balance. Why do I keep harping on balance? It’s because in this “either/or” world we much too often inhabit, we can frequently find ourselves pulled toward one extreme or another. Either this, or that. Nothing in between. We seek balance because if we are blown off balance we can find ourselves stuck at one extreme or the other. And being stuck, by definition, means we become immobile.

            One destructive set of polar opposites that has been particularly in evidence during the pandemic are fear and denial. Some of us have surrendered to fear. Yes, COVID-19 can indeed be deadly. The death-toll can be staggering. But we are not all going to die. And yes, many of us have lost our jobs. But hopefully our government will act, and those who have lost their jobs will receive the support they need to keep it together until this is over. And the truth of it is that all pandemics, no matter how deadly and destructive, end. They do end! Our economies will come back, they always have. So, if we would keep our balance and keep from being overwhelmed, we want to identify paralyzing fear as an obstacle to our well-being, be willing to grapple with it, and strive to leave it in the dust.

            The polar opposite of fear is denial. The truth of it is there are folks among us, even now, who dwell in the house of denial. After all, at one point the president said this was just the flu and would vanish. Poof: gone! Several prominent radio commentators have gone farther, one even calling it the common cold. Given how many around the world and in the United States have been infected and how many have died and continue to die, it’s hard to imagine how someone could still cling to the belief that COVID-19 is just a simple flu, let alone the common cold; but that’s the power of denial. And when people have embraced denial it can be all but impossible to coax them away from it. Facts become meaningless.

Fear and denial can both immobilize us. Yet, both tug at us. So, we’ll want to keep our balance between the two.

            Okay. So, what else needs to be balanced in order for us to do what we can, given the cards we hold? For one thing, we need a balance of attention between us and the world outside. That’s what we’ll begin discussing in Chapter Two. We all know folks who think of themselves and only themselves. That’s just plain unhealthy, not to mention narcissistic and hurtful. This is how families are ripped apart and destroyed. But we also know folks who think only of the others, putting everyone else first and themselves last. This is also unhealthy, as never taking care of ourselves puts us at risk. The truth is, in order to be healthy enough to help others, we must also take care of ourselves. Again, we’ll explore this more deeply in Chapter Two with some thoughts on a nurturing healthy regard for ourselves.

            In Chapter Three we’ll explore the needs of our human family, and what we might do for our brothers and sisters. I deeply believe in humanity as a family. Indeed, I wrote a book about it (One Family: Indivisible), sharing why I believe so strongly that we are all brothers and sisters and how I came to that belief. So again, if we always put ourselves or even our personal family first, to the exclusion of our brothers and sisters around the world, we have lost our balance.

            There’s one final aspect to our balancing act that I’d like us to examine. This is balance between today and tomorrow. In the midst of the pandemic it’s hard, very hard to think of anything past how we survive today—how do we pay the rent or mortgage, how do we keep food on the table, how do we stay healthy? These are huge and important questions! But if we can somehow maintain a bit of balance, we might just make for a better future. I believe that one of the reasons we are so deeply in this mess today is the fact that in the past, too many in positions of power were only thinking and spending for their today, not giving enough thought to the tomorrow that we are now living. No matter what happens with the pandemic, and no matter when it ends, it will end. And from that ending will come a “new normal.” In Chapter Four, we’ll take a brief look at how we might begin to envision and work for a positive “new normal.” 

For more posts about Steven and his books, click HERE.

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