I shook someone’s hand today. I hugged a pastor yesterday. I embraced family on Christmas. Why should these things stand out? Why must they be remarked upon?
I wasn’t raised with a lot of physical affection. My dad was breaking a cycle of abuse and my mom came from a reserved Anglo family.
When I met my wife, we had the physical passion of new lovers, but she introduced me to a casual affection that stirred a longing in me. I remember the first hippy camping festival we attended together: her friends, total strangers to me, hugged me and said, “Welcome home.” It was not comfortable, I hadn’t experienced that kind of openness before. It took me years to open myself to friendly, physical gestures like that. It wasn’t until I held my first son that I began to understand how important physical connection is for me.
This year has been a cruel reminder of how much I crave physical, mental, and spiritual closeness with people.
I didn’t need a reminder. Widowhood has meant plenty of isolation.
It was a bad day. My energy, temper, patience, compassion…none of it was what I needed to be today. I was a shell toddling around in places I was supposed to be, present in none of them.
Somehow I remember that the greatest victories come out of these dark places.
My father gave my son and I books by Carl Jung today. A four-hundred page paperback of tiny type for an eleven-year-old.
That’s why I remember Jung, “No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.” I cling to these words as the roots dig deeper. I cling to this as I chase, battle, and retreat from demons through my dreams, leaving me unrested each morning for days.
Two hours left in this awful day and I’m on the floor with unwrapped gifts, acting out a solo version of an old tradition. Mary and I would stay up wrapping gifts, leaving evidence of Santa’s visit, and preparing for Christmas morning. Santa has left the stage, but I still feel the pressure to make Christmas morning special.
This will be my third Christmas as a single father. With all my carrying on, I’ve managed to not have a girlfriend each year at this time. Maybe Mary still occupies too much of my heart in this season, there may not be room for anyone else quite yet.
I thought the miracle might come today. This month has been indefatigably difficult. I know something wonderful is near. It will be a surprise and I am eager for it to arrive. I suppose that is why I must wait a while longer.
Two things I listened to today brought up the topic of groupthink in relation to Covid-19. I think it’s too easy for those in a seemingly minority position to accuse the perceived majority of groupthink.
Instead, I turn inward and look at my own penchant for confirmation bias. The strange events of the last year have divided society cleanly into believers in Lockdown and the skeptical. The problem with this cleavage is that it doesn’t afford these two groups any opportunity to sit down together in person and discuss their differences.
The only people who will meet and talk with me largely agree that masks, Lockdown, and the general fear over Covid-19 are out of balance with the threat. The hazard of groupthink among this minority seems just as dangerous as among those who would sit in front of their TVs and believe the talking heads. We share belief-confirming articles and podcasts and generally support one another with a confidence that we are sane in an insane world.
I’m uneasy when everyone agrees.
I don’t read a lot of the mainstream articles. I haven’t for years. I was a nerdy teenager watching Newt Gingrich give a speech on the House floor on C-SPAN one night after busing tables in the 90s. The next day I heard a media outlet clearly twist his words with clever editing. Then there was the Summer of the Shark in 2001 when shark attacks were slightly down from the previous year, but they were the biggest story until the terrorist attacks of 9/11. It was an embarrassingly long time before I finally took the red pill and saw both the “Right” and “Left” corporate media for the mainstream narrative parrots that they are.
There’s a joke about taking just one red pill, not the whole bottle. I’ve probably taken two or three. I don’t go in for half measures and corporate media, public education, and mainstream narratives have never treated me well.
I certainly haven’t slipped into conspiratorial thinking, but I like listening to those who have, their insights can be more valuable than anything you’ll find in the approved mouthpieces.
Have I fallen into a type of groupthink? I don’t think so. Before finding this new social circle, I lost connections with too many communities: homeschool, faith, and family. I was in the dumps because I was an outlier in my Lockdown skepticism. I’m feeling the weight of depression again. The path I’ve chosen sucks. I hope that’s an indicator that even if I am wrong, I’m no victim of groupthink.
I don’t care about the hypocrisy, it comes with the territory when you choose to work with the government. One day, you find yourself breaking the rules you represent because the rules (i.e., regulations, laws, mandates, dictates, edicts) are impossible to follow consistently over time.
What you need to know is that people who have access to the best information, all the qualifications, and are being paid to be the experts are not worried about a “novel” virus killing them nor their loved ones.
There are moments when things feel almost right. Moments when we’re with the right people at the right place. Even then, in picture perfect scenes, the shadows of a twisted reality creep across our path.
Yesterday, we met a home educating family at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library for fun and exploring in the snow. Snowball fights, storytelling, nature appreciation, and my sons’ love of getting away from the grown ups ruled the children’s day.
We’ve been friends for years and probably share more common interests with them than any other family I know. The kids love each other, I’ve played innumerable hours of soccer with the dad, and the mom has been one of my best spiritual and emotional supports in widowhood.
The mom and I walked and talked at a healthy distance from our rabblerousers and couldn’t seem to stay off of sad topics. My recent breakup, wrestling with depression, the aggravations of Zoom school (they are educationally diverse), and the unreality we are experiencing.
We only saw another dozen or so people during hours in the thousand-acre expanse, but they were mostly masked. Couples, hundreds of yards from other humans, walking along with their faces covered. There was no breeze and the sun was brilliantly warming, although the air was chill. It’s troubling and scary that this behaviour is being normalized. This particular oddity of covering our skin from the vitamin D-producing sunlight our bodies so desperately need to stay healthy is worrisome. We’ve known for months that vitmin D deficiency is rampant in hospitalizations. It is difficult to get the necessary exposure to sun in the winter, why are we covering our faces?
I take heart in the example we’re setting for our children. We teach them that health and freedom are not mutually exclusive. We teach them that health is an individual responsibility. We teach them that you must first care for yourself before you can be able to care for others. More importantly, we model these principles in our own words and actions.
In March of this year, just as the world was turning to fear and I watched fellow Christians recede from one another, I had the opportunity to help a homeless family. The mom wasn’t feeling well and needed to be seen by a doctor. Her children and mine piled into my minivan and we headed to an urgent care in heavy morning rain. It wasn’t open yet, so she asked to go to the bus stop to get to a hospital. She wasn’t in need of emergency care, but that was her only option. I almost dropped them off at the bus stop, but thought better of it. I insisted on driving her to the hospital and she begrudgingly acquiesced, her pride was worn from little sleep and respiratory distress.
I didn’t think about being in danger. I didn’t think I was putting my children in harm’s way. It felt much more dangerous to walk away, or leave them at a bus stop.
Later, I Iearned that she had a strep infection. My wife and sons had suffered strep infections two years previous and she didn’t survive. Maybe we survived in order to help that mom. I don’t know.
I don’t know why we’re hiding from each other now. Maybe people need the illusion of safety and security to go about their lives. I don’t ever remember being blinded by that lie, but going through tragedy has stripped away the delusion that existence isn’t integrally bounded by suffering.
Today, I’m going to do my best to accept neccessary suffering and work to relieve unnecessary suffering in myself and others.
The Lockdowns don’t save lives. How many stay-at-home people are testing positive? Hoe many people trapped in care facilities have died? This is the season of respiratory infection. It won’t end until sometime in Spring. What will our society look like after a year of this?
From Tom Woods:
I just read a Florida reporter talking about a rise in hospitalizations in our state.
Is there some isolated issue in Florida right now?
Or are hospitalizations rising everywhere, regardless of policy?
No answer, of course.
Remember, too:
In Florida there are no restrictions on private gatherings, no restrictions on bars and restaurants, no restrictions on churches, no restrictions on gyms, and no curfews or stay-at-home orders.
Florida also has the fifth-oldest population in the country (as opposed to California, at 44th).
Yet in a graph of maybe a dozen states’ current hospitalizations per million, I see Florida doing better than such blue, “follow-the-science,” ruin-people’s-lives states as New York, California, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Mexico, and New Jersey.
Are any of those places going to be criticized?
You already know the answer.
We are living through the craziest moment in our lifetimes. Almost nobody is being rational, and almost nobody can even be trusted to report data properly.
I will never want to live “off the grid,” because I’d hate it, but I definitely want to live in a way that doesn’t rely on crazy people.
Hence my various businesses, all of which are insulated against the crazies.
I sat down and recorded over-the-shoulder videos of how you can do this. It’s called Net Profits Academy.
Coupon code woods lowers the price from $47 to a mere $19.95, but it expires at midnight.
I don’t know how businesses will survive the latest restrictions, especially when they are given one business day to comply and threatened with a zero tolerance policy.
I don’t know if more people will rebel, or if more people will break under the rules. I feel close to breaking.
I don’t think serious consideration is given to those who are in difficult positions: single parents fighting to provide a healthy and positive environment for their children, grandparents and great-grandparents who may be isolated for their last holiday season, the people who have lost jobs and businesses, those struggling with addiction and depression, and every single human who has been shamed and insulted in this terrible Lockdown.
I go to sleep tonight with a weight on my chest. I will pray for peace and guidance. I will ask for wisdom and clarity as I have done repeatedly over the last nine months. I am ever hopeful, but that hope is thinning.
A lot of Facebook memories popped up today. 2018 an 2019 were tough, but they finished in quietly spectacular ways.
I’m in a low place. It feels like there is more loss than gain this month. More isolation and loneliness. Too many deeply personal emotions to share with clear words.
This is the place when the light is dim and the wood is dark. I’ve been through enough of these dark nights to know how bright the sun is on the other side. I don’t wait for it, I push into the ever darkening path, for that is the way to the light.
This week I read a post from a Lockdown-enforcing friend. She said that she would be avoiding those who are not strictly complying after “this” is over. Firstly, what is the metric for that? When do we stop trading germs, bacteria, and viruses? When do we stop sharing bad habits? When do we stop poisoning minds with ideas we deem “bad?” When do we stop being human and fallen and full of snakes and mistakes?
Aside from the philosophical absurdity of pretending that humans (and eveything else in existence) aren’t dangerous, I’m deeply troubled. Her children have been friends with mine for years. Her and I have stood as vocal homeschooling advocates and I consider her an ally in promoting educational freedom. We disagree on fundamental political and religious fronts, but we’ve found our common goals to outweigh our differences.
She was at Mary’s memorial and made her way to me through a daunting crowd to deliver a message of support that I will never forget.
The home education community is small and diverse. We have serious divides on serious issues, but we’ve always been able to discuss them while our children play and learn together.
I pray that this is emotional manipulation to acquire a desired behavior. I pray it is an empty threat. My children have no control over my choices, why should they be further isolated from friends after this difficult year?
