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Duck

We just get by however we can.

· meditation,frustration,mind

“We just get by
However we can
We all have to duck
When the shit hits the fan”

 

- Circle Jerks, When the Shit Hits the Fan, Golden Shower of Hits, 1983

I’ve seen a lot of people expressing rage lately. I get it. I’ve done, though not publicly – so much.

I am not concerned with anger at the system. I’m not concerned with rage at politicians. I’m not offended by people frustrated by inept responses from incompetent leaders. What concerns me most is what appears to me to be misplaced rage. And it is rage.

This rage covers a spectrum from red-faced-fists-raised-rant to forehead-in-palm-SMH-dismissal.

There’s the spittle flinging posts from an otherwise rational person about a television show, in which the poster calls into question the worth of anyone who dares watch, much less enjoy, anything that references anything that that person finds offensive. “hope you fucking soulless hipsters are happy with your chosen pastime at the end of the world.” [sic]

There’s the lovely, kind, thoughtful friend who’s upset by people posting personal accomplishments in this time of discomfort. “I am so overwhelmed with the grief for the death, the ill, the workers on the frontlines, the economic suffering of so many of us, the missing of loved ones near, it feels just weird to go yay you, when people are showing me their new living room set up, …”

I get it. Everything is magnified. We’re all (or at least those of us who are self-isolating) are tucked inside the veil of curtilage on our own properties, safer at home. Safer at home and removed from our normal self-selecting crew of likeminded friends, with whom we can vent, rant, and process.

Process. I think that’s what I’ve been seeing. Friends, people that I adore and respect, processing. It’s the processing on social media part that I’m not used to. I’m processing right now. Struggling to wrap my mind around the discordant feelings I’m experiencing.

When someone I like chides on Facebook that I - by virtue of having watched one (granted asinine, yet entertaining) informative docuseries that opened my eyes to a problem that I didn’t know existed – am a, “… fucking soulless hipster …,” I feel my hackles rising. When my wife posts a picture of her garden - a place she goes to work through her fears, angers, anxieties – and is encouraged to not share such happy things during the, “… suffering of so many of us …,” I feel my hackles rising.

I’m trying to process this crazy time myself. I’ve alternately hosted virtual cocktail hours for fellow investigators, stayed in bed late watching Maine Cabin Masters (just to witness something uplifting), and worked at my actual job (you know, to be productive.).

Here’s my take. We all have some processing to do. We all have to adjust to social distancing, lack of contact with people we love, fear of loss of work, fear (natural and very real) of a deadly virus that we do not understand. “We’re dealing with a lot of shit.” – C. Davis

I’m gonna try to keep my processing to the blog, out of sight of social media. In the words of the inimitable Greg Hetson and Keith Morris, “We just get by however we can. We all have to duck when the shit hits the fan.”