Perhaps the most ironic aspect of our current circumstances – staying at home because authorities advise social distancing to keep a nasty pandemic virus from spreading – is that most of us need a break. This is March 16, 2020, and I need a break.
Over these past months, I have been running around from coast to coast in the US and Canada, trying to promote a method to transform difficult conversations called Real Dialogue, and its therapy companion for couples, Dialogue Therapy. These approaches are designed specifically to end polarization and transform conflict without forcing resolution or compromise. They are founded on Mindfulness and psychoanalysis – those very activities that ask us to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n. Mindfulness and psychoanalysis require that we pay close attention moment-to-moment without pushing and pulling on our experiences. Just accept things as they are and stay alert, they advise. No complaining. No freaking out. Only slowing down and paying attention. That’s what I have been promoting, but it took a pandemic virus to get me to slow down in my everyday life.
Instead, like many of you (I imagine), I was dashing around to teach a method for slowing down. Slowing down especially in “difficult conversations.” Those are conversations in which we are stressed, at odds, confused, or emotionally threatened and genuinely need to take a breath in order to speak and listen mindfully. And I have also been in a difficult conversation with myself, a conflict about slowing down: NO TIME and GOTTA DO THIS versus YOU NEED A PAUSE, YOU NEED A REST. This is my first day in that pause because my travel, events, and plans have been canceled. I feel grateful and blessed for this pause.
I am staying at home and staying quiet. I am doing this even though I don’t know exactly why some experts think this is the best way to quell a virus that behaves in ways we don’t yet understand. Earlier this week, I was shocked to hear that colleges, universities, schools, churches, restaurants, and other businesses were closing their doors and that large cultural and social events were canceled. Although I listened to and read the opinions of many medical and other experts who say this is the “most conservative” approach to take to a pandemic that we do not fully understand yet, I have also listened to many medical and other experts who worry about the economic, social and psychological damage that will result from this pause we are taking. I don’t know what to think about all this. In my spiritual life, I am a big proponent of the “Don’t Know Mind” and that is the mind I am drawing on now. I “don’t know why” this virus has invited me and everyone else to slow down, but hey, wow, I am taking a pause. And I don’t know if this socially distancing pause is “good” or “bad,” but it has arrived.
Consequently, I am also returning to my “Living With Love” blog. I have been away for quite a while and have published a book called “Love Between Equals: Relationship as a Spiritual Path” (2019) and have two more books underway -- one on Dialogue Therapy and Real Dialogue (that I am writing with my colleague Jean Pieniadz) and another on Enlightenment and Idealization (that I am writing with my colleague David Hill). I have also been podcasting (Enemies: From War to Wisdom) and teaching and training Dialogue Therapy and Real Dialogue in many places, for a couple of years. But now, I am taking a break because my teaching and training events have been canceled and postponed.
You might wonder what a “break” is if you are home with young children or elders that need your help and care, and you are already worried about lost income. You may be worried also about your children’s education and activities during this time of pause. I know how that feels; I also live with others who have needs different from mine and I am already stressing about lost income. And yet, I also want to reflect with you on what it means to break from routine and to not know what is going to happen next.
We are in suspended animation, so to speak, in which our old habits and usual ways will have to reorganize. We are in the “between” and we are stuck here for a while. We cannot easily attach a label or meaning to many things we have previously taken for granted: prediction, control, the future, and what we and our loved ones will need.
Even though I feel grateful for this pause, I am seriously confused about its meaning and don’t feel at all at ease about the disruption it brings. I don’t know if undermining our social and economic stability will unnecessarily increase the harm this virus causes or if social distancing necessarily gives us the space in which we can make careful plans for how our healthcare system can respond to dire circumstances. And I cannot forget that this is a time when many people (including perhaps you or me) will get very sick and need a lot of help. It’s a time when some sizable number of our species will die from breathing – breathing in a pathogen that attacks their bodily tissues.
And yet, at this very moment on March 16, 2020, it seems that this virus has created a condition in which it says, “Take a breath and take a pause.” Like many others, I want to believe that something new and something wiser might be developing among us, but I also don’t want to idealize this pause before it even reveals its meaning. I don’t know and you don’t know whether our social distancing is “good” or “bad” or exactly what it “means.” All of us are trying to respond to a pandemic virus that was created in part by the ways we humans prepare and sell the animals we eat. You (like me) might want to land just one prediction for the future or one meme about what’s going on.
Instead, what I am trying to do here is just notice how quickly my mind wants to know and wants to believe that I have a way to protect myself or my family. I want to do the right thing and know how to respond to get the best outcome. I want to believe that “taking a breath” or getting a break is a “good” thing or a “bad” thing (e.g. Is the worst thing about this virus going to be the social distancing and the economic stress?) as though I had an overview of the entire world and could see all of the contingencies.
But this world in which we live – called the “world of life-and-death” in classical Buddhism – is a confusing place that combines together those fretful opposites of health/disease, peace/war, fear/calm, inner/outer, love/hate, and right/wrong. We cannot know if our predictions and our efforts are on the “right” side at this moment or what taking a breather might mean. But I am taking it. I hope this pause can help you, as it seems to be helping me. I hope the virus can teach us something new: that we can learn more about the Don’t Know Mind and that we can remain interested, engaged, kind and compassionate, even if we cannot know whether our judgments are “right” or “wrong” in a moment of profound confusion.
As we take a breath and take a pause, can we also see that moment-to-moment we are safe, at ease, and supported by “something” we do not understand and cannot control? Maybe this virus can teach us more about that something and how we can come to understand our situations and conditions -- from different sides and through various lenses, in order to approach our (always imperfect) responses to our human dilemmas.