I Had Plans

Last summer, my cousin was supposed to come visit. Then the Delta variant of Covid arrived. We promised to try again in winter, but Omicron and other things got in the way. Sometime mid-Omicron, I got a reminder to use a credit for a trip I was supposed to take in 2020. I needed to book a flight before the end of 2021 to keep the credit; I chose a random weekend in April; it’s anyone’s guess if I will actually make the trip.

Right now I have a plane ticket for a different trip more than two years delayed. I’m supposed to fly out in just over a week. I’ll believe it when the wheels touch the tarmac at my destination. Circumstances are such that I remain filled with doubt.

Common advice for people bogged down in the day-to-day, for people with personal struggles, says to plan something fun, something you’ll enjoy. Apparently, humans are wired to benefit mentally from planning for the future. My bigger delights have been stolen, sometimes weeks in advance, sometimes at the last minute, for over two years now, and my smaller ones, things like friends at the kitchen table for waffles, sidelined by the latest news.

There are more things open to us than two years back but there is a strangeness to them; I went to a live show a few nights ago and entering the theater was a lot like transiting airport security. “Vax card and ID, please, next!” I’m game if this is what makes our lives possible, but each time I navigate one of these situations, I carry an undercurrent of anger.

Another notion for Dealing with All This is the idea of radical acceptance. Why yes, hello, I have been a bit of therapy these last five years, in addition to the pandemic, I suffered a debilitating depression and a contentious divorce. I will get this wrong and I am still learning this idea so please bear with me but… radical acceptance. Radical acceptance isn’t about being all “Shrug, it is what it is,” but it does require you examine the situation with more attention. I found it helpful to apply this line of thinking to my divorce: Was there anything left for me to do? What’s in my control and what’s out of it?

That same therapist asked me to consider what was serving me, which on its face seems very selfish but when you think about yourself as having a finite amount of energy to spend on survival, do you want to pick a fight with the guy in the supermarket who is wearing a mask under his chin? Or do you want to protect yourself, move away, and go home with your groceries? More magnanimous people might say there are cases when you are obligated as a human to step in, to speak up. One asshole in the supermarket is probably not that case.

I interpret radical acceptance as interrogating a situation to find out what I can and can’t do. I can’t make that guy in the supermarket wear a mask. I can’t make Covid disappear. At its most reductive this concept gets repackaged as serenity prayer Pinterest and Instagram posts. At the other end is, perhaps, that Tibetan Buddhist practice of watching vultures destroy uninterred bodies. “It’s all just meat and bones, man, so unmasked supermarket guy doesn’t matter.” I don’t know. I’m a poor philosopher, tired and badly in need of a vacation, trapped between the notions of can and should, between the desire to make plans and the need to accept that any plans I make can be overturned by circumstances outside my control.

In the meantime, I try to focus on what is happening right now. Today I will walk my dog; he is an excellent guide to existentialism. I will spend half an hour, maybe more, working in my sketchbook, a daily practice I have taken up because I am not good at passive meditation and it helps quiet my brain. I will dress for the gym and may even go; I strive for three times a week. I will do some writing and some laundry and research what to do with all these sweet potatoes, why are there so many sweet potatoes in my house right now? Grant me the serenity to accept all these damned sweet potatoes, lord, and the wisdom to know what to make with them. I will spend too much time looking at my phone and worrying, I will watch some TV, I will take a nap. These are all things that don’t require much planning, they’re all on the short timeline of today. I can deal with today.

But I will also make plans with the full knowledge that they may not happen because I am just meat and bones, man, and maybe it doesn’t matter.