I think a lot of people are feeling different forms of this same feeling these days, and for varying reasons. It makes me think of the common saying these days, "We're all in this together."

We are facing some of the same challenges, true, but are we really in it together? I mean is a nurse in NYC/London facing the same set of choices as a retired executive in Montana? Is someone in New Zealand, that has pretty much eliminated the pandemic in their country facing the same choices as a person in America, the worst performing nation on the planet in this?

We are all facing our own experience of ideas like safety, danger, security, lack, ease, health, connection, isolation, meaning, despair and so on. What we are all facing together is uncertainty.

Suddenly however we had adjusted ourselves to the status quo no longer works the same because everything is in transition. Whatever you adjust to this month, wait until you see next month. And I think it's going to keep being like this for at least another year.

All my travel plans, dashed. How am I going to travel to 4 countries in 3 months as I'd planned, vetting possible new nations to make my home, when I have to be in quarantine in very undesirable circumstances (hotel with hotel food and no yard) for two weeks each time I enter a country? And certainly they won't let me bring my dog as I'd planned.

Even on a day to day basis, I moved to where I am now to be near my family, and now we meet on zoom, which I could have done from anywhere. I do get to drive over to see my mother once a week, and we walk with masks lest I expose her to something she can't recover from.

And is she truly at risk? Well there are lots of different theories about it, but the bottom line is that my theories don't apply to her reality. Her theories apply to her reality. And since she has diabetes and is elderly, she has been told that she is likely to die if exposed to a virus as easily spread as Ebola. So compassion requires that I engage with her with respect to her truth, not whatever mine might be.

Figuring out how to engage with people who are not in fact all in this together, who have different ways of seeing themselves in this new abnormal, is exhausting. It is impossible to feel like you are doing right by everyone. It is difficult to even know how to do right by oneself sometimes.

I envy you your clarity when you search within. I don't feel that clarity. I feel buffered this way and that by the powerful currents of anxiety, despair, and suffering around me. 90,000 people have died in my country in the last 2 months. That's 90,000 grieving families, all sending that grief into the collective. And how many more who knew the deceased who also mourn and fear they may be infected, but can't get tested to find out? I feel all of that. I have to keep being so intentional to direct my attention toward things like dance, and the wind in the trees, and delicious healthy meals, volunteer work I'm doing, calls with family, and such. Any time I'm not being very intentional, I get pulled into the waves of grief, despite having suffered no personal losses.

I see my country dismantling itself all around me. I see my nation's people fighting each other over foolish ideas. I see people shooting people for asking them to put on a mask to enter a store. I see people asking the government to put a tracking app on their phone so they feel safe. I see the government trying to dismantle the post office, a feature of the US that predates our Constitution. I see corporations getting the equivalent of $86,000 per person, while the actual people get only $1,200. I see the police gunning down people of my race in their beds just for sleeping in a poor zip code. And on and on it goes.

How does anyone feel like they know what's going on in all this? How does anyone feel free? Doesn't freedom only exist in a context that is understood? I don't understand any of this, and have no idea how I'll respond to whatever madness happens next.

I'm sorry my comment isn't very encouraging. I started writing it trying to be, but just can't find my way there.

Take care. Know that you are being led. Trust your journey.