One of the keys to getting through this thing is, I think, accepting acceptance. Many things I don't like are way beyond my power to fix…Donald Trump, for example. In ordinary times, I've posted links to articles and arguments of my own about what a truly dangerous, incompetent buffoon I think he is.
That is not a recently-arrived-at position, by the way. Many years ago, I spent some time around him backstage at a David Letterman taping and Trump was rude, nasty, vulgar towards women and obsessed with two things: His personal wealth and people kissing his ass. He seemed to live for telling people how much richer he was than they were.
I have not seen one moment of his "presidency" that has even suggested to me that anything has changed about the man. He doesn't even strike me as a guy who really believes he's President of the United States or has a clue what that might mean in terms of obligations to others.
But you haven't seen many postings about him here lately because I figure that even the microscopic chances I had of convincing fans of his to see him my way are now non-existent. If the way he behaves during this — the greatest crisis of most of our lifetimes — doesn't change a mind, that mind is not changeable. So let's write about silly songs and comic books and cats in my backyard!
I accept that he's there. I also accept, as way too many people haven't, that we are in utterly uncharted territory here. We do not know when it will end and things will begin veering back towards normal…and how things will be different then.
I think it will end differently for each of us because each of us has a different standard for when we'll feel safe enough to venture more readily into public places. You may decide it's okay to go out, sans mask, and mingle with other people long before I do. If I owned a business that had to close because of the lockdown order, I would not assume I can or should open it the minute my state or city said it was okay. I certainly wouldn't reopen if I felt it would not be profitable to do that right away.
How many people are going to go to shows where they'd have to sit six feet from others? How many are going to get on airplanes? How much fun can you have anywhere if you're wearing a mask and worrying about what you touch and about that guy coughing seven feet from you?
Las Vegas is itching to reopen. Hotels are taking reservations for late May or early June. They're installing plexiglass panels between slot machines and when you check in, you'll be given a little kit with masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, safety instructions, wipes, etc. The gaming tables will keep players separated from one another and every hour or so, someone will come by and sterilize all the chips that have been changing gloved hands.
At each entrance, someone will be taking your temperature and if it's over 100.4°, you don't get in. (Foolish Question: If I'm one of those "whales" — the folks who go to Vegas, lose $200,000 and say we had a great time because they comped our room, meals and hooker — am I going to be turned away if my forehead says 101.5°?)
No shows. No tourist attractions. No Elvis impersonators. And at the few buffets that will reopen, you'll point to the food you want and a masked/gloved employee will scoop some of it onto your plate and then clean the serving spoon. This does not sound like a vacation paradise to me. The only folks who'll like it are the folks who've been banned from casinos for cheating or winning and who figure they might get back in somewhere masked.
I accept I'm not going there for a long time. How long? I accept that I have no idea. No one knows. No one can know. There are no precedents. This has never happened before. I couldn't even tell you when in the future I might feel it's okay to leave my house without a mask.
Nature abhors a vacuum and when there's something we don't know, we have a tendency to want to fill that gap with an answer even if it means yanking one out of one's butt. As I've gotten older, I've stopped believing (most of the time) that a wrong answer is better than no answer. If I ask you how to get to the post office, I'd vastly prefer "I don't know" to a semi-wild guess.
I love making plans. I used to drive Carolyn nuts with my itineraries and "to do" lists and telling her we had to leave for some event by exactly 5:05 PM. But I had a lot of information to use in making up those schedules and a sense of what everyone else would do. We're all living in the moment now and I accept that. I don't like it but I accept it. If your frustrations are reaching defcon proportions, you might try my approach. There's less disappointment when things don't happen.
If you absolutely must make a plan, label it "A" and then make Plan B and Plan C and D and an E and an F…and if you run out of letters before you run out of plans, go to "AA" and "BB" and so on. Because while I'm reasonably certain this will end and life will be a lot more like it was than as it is, I have no idea when or what will change. And neither do you so you might as well accept that.