What do YOU call it?

Boredom in Isolation? by Barbara Helvey Hughes, March 22, 2020
 
It was long and long ago and I was sheltered from the Indiana summer heat by the long straight line of Lombardy poplars stretched across the back of our yard.  I might have been eight or nine years old ~ if I close my eyes I still see my younger self slumped against that thin tall trunk, stripping bark from a fallen twig, chewing on a sweet blade of grass and gazing into the cloudless electric blue sky.  It’s odd what we remember but that is a memory, forever etched into my Hall of Memories.  Why?  Because that day I said this to my brother: There’s nothing to do. Where IS everybody?! I’m SO BORED!!!  My late brother, Ron, sat in a heavy wood and metal wheelchair shaded by the overgrown hedge at the side of the yard, chuckling and shaking his head, rather disgustedly if truth be told.
 
Ron was struck by a deadly virus when he was six years old – polio.  Something we can’t even see.  He held the distinction of being one of the worst cases.  Many of the kids who contracted polio came through it and could walk, some with short braces or a limp, but Ron was completely confined to his prison chair, during most of those developmental years.  It always reminded me of a prisoner’s electric chair ~ forebodingly cruel, especially to a young and what should have been, active, boy. 
 
What?! I irritatingly asked as he looked away from me.  He didn’t, or couldn’t, speak for a few seconds, then he looked up and narrowed his eyes as he gulped between words.  Barb, you have no idea what boredom is.  Try sitting in this chair from the moment you get up and until the moment you’re put back in bed.  Try not being able to go to the bathroom or walk to the door or get a drink unless someone helps you.  Try having an operation every single summer of your life and STILL not be able to move without help.  Not even be able to grab a book or look out a window because you can’t really move anywhere by yourself ~ everything I want or need is out of reach or out of the way.  Yeah, try that, then tell me how bored you are and how there’s nothing to do…Ron taught me at an early age that virtually everything is about one’s unique perspective.
 
My brother was always such an amazing teacher for me.  He was my Hero and I have to say it was Ron, who taught me Compassion and Empathy and to whatever degree I have evolved into it, Kindness and by that extension ~ Love. From the day he got polio and was placed in an iron lung until the day he died, in November 2018, he never took one single step on his own and without the help of heavy steel braces and, yet, he lived his life with little or no complaints, he went to school, to work and when he retired he ran research projects on his computers and helped many, many people along their own path, including me. 
 
I am grateful he will not be enduring the challenges of this pandemic.  Truly, he travelled through more than enough challenges during his life.
 
We ~ you and I, face weeks if not months, of isolation ahead of us because of a virus.  Something we can’t even see.  It will kill many of us and disable even more.  It will cause economic terror and destruction of lives on all levels.  It will evolve, possibly, into the stuff of our worst nightmares and those movies we don’t want to watch ~ disaster/horror/terror/futuristic.  But, we WILL watch as real life unravels before our eyes and we wonder why we were so complacent when it began.
 
Yet, if we are wise, and I believe we are; if we are kind, Loving and compassionate and I believe most of us are; and if we have Faith in ourselves and in one another (and this kind of Truth generally appears most vividly during  catastrophic circumstances) and I ABSOLUTELY believe we do ~ we will also watch as we join and pull together, we let go of ‘self’ and embrace the entirety of all of us, we will do what’s right for all, rather than selfishly what we want or feel we ‘deserve’. 
 
We will, undoubtedly, whine, complain, bitch and moan about our lives. We may try to thwart safe action and go out.  Many might become angry, engage in violence against those we Love, become depressed or despondent, asking:  Why are we in forced isolation? What do they expect us to do? How can we live under these conditions?  We are FREE and we NEED to be able to go out, to earn a living and pay our bills, to socialize, to play, to have fun, to mingle, to interact, to, to, to…….me, me, me!!!
 
Yes, there are those narcissists, those centered in huge egos, those who think the rules/requirements don’t pertain to them and they will be found out.  They will, eventually, punish themselves or be punished by others, when it didn’t have to happen: when they, too, could have assisted rather than thinking only of themselves.
 
But those few simply won’t matter in the long run and in the larger picture. What WILL matter is that WE stood together, WE helped one another as best we could and even if it only meant we stayed inside, WE were there for those who needed the comfort of our prayers, our gentle and Loving thoughts: our encouragement. 
 
In isolation we need never become bored: we can share our Love and Hope and ultimately, what will matter is that WE will awaken and understand how deeply we have harmed our very home and WE will join together and take action to limit that harm in the future, knowing if we do not, there will be a very different future awaiting us.
 
WE will LEARN from this situation and WE will begin the process of BECOMING….more Loving, more Aware, more thoughtful, more affirmative, more connected to not only one another regardless of where we live, but to our Beloved Earth, who provides a home for ALL of us.
 
To every cloud there is a silver lining.
 
Boredom is simply thinking too much about ourselves.
 
We need never be bored, even in isolation.
 
For me and Peter, we are writing, editing, planning, gathering material for books, organizing, reaching out, cleaning, cooking, laughing, thinking, having discussions, talking with those we Love and doing our best to BE here for them and for one another.  This just might be looked back upon as a singularly momentous time.  Precious.
Bored? Not likely….
 
Love is the language spoken here.