Dennis Prager, a radio talk show host on the conservative spectrum (I know a lot of folks denominate him a "hater"; alas, that means I am also a hater, since I think he makes a lot of sense, though I think people who know me wouldn't say I was by any measure--but who knows) also came into my head, as he was talking in the last few days about the illusion, or delusion, perhaps that we cannot reopen the United States for life's business, until we are "safe".
Then the tune from Linda Ronstadt's song "When Will I be Loved" came into my head. I started to sing to myself, in a variation, "When Will I--I- be Safe?"
He says "never". I think "never" is about as accurate as you can get. Society always balances interests and creates as much "safety" as is possible given the fact that without exception, every single one of us is going to die. Some die sooner than others. I know we are not allowed to raise it, but we even facilitate the deaths of our youngest citizens (the unborn) as a matter of right, and in some countries, and some states in America, the elderly. You are not necessarily safe either in the womb nor in the care of some of your loved ones.
Some die at a very old age. My father lived till 90 and probably would have lived longer had his doctors not been dismissive of him (and me) and our concerns about their ministrations such that he died of sepsis. My mother died relatively young of cancer at age 48. One of her sisters at 59, another at over 90, and the last is 93 and kicking.
I feel really sorry for people who suffer from hypochondria. I used to be one of them, pretty much through my late teens, an early signal of the obsessive compulsive struggle I have had all my life. I used to fear choking. I was always checking how I swallowed. And if I was able to. That went on for a long time. Then, after my father had a heart attack, I was convinced I was going to have one. I think that spell was about a year. I could swear I felt palpitations all the time. Around the same time, I noticed quite a few people were committing suicide, and so I became terrified, since I was actually also depressed, that I might commit suicide. I couldn't be near any high place fearful of an impulse I couldn't control. I went about my business oddly enough, and even successfully, but I saw the world as if through a haze the whole time. This was all through my lapsed period of religious faith.
I still have a residue of that old anxiety, and I actually have to watch out for the triggers. My best friends laugh at the fact I don't cook. There are lots of reasons for it, but one of those reasons only the fewest of the few have known up to here, is that when I cook meat or fish, I am always afraid, even if I have cooked it to a crisp, that it might not be sufficient to have warded off trichinosis, or food poisoning, or whatever can kill you. And it's why I don't cook when I do have guests. I order the food, which I know doesn't mean that all will necessarily be well, but at least I would not be directly the cause. I am afraid to cause harm to others but in a compulsive, irrational sort of way. I especially avoid pork for that reason. Just the other night I had a couple of salmon patties and became worked up that they weren't done enough. I almost threw them out as I have often done in the past. I suppose it is a sign of some improvement that I didn't. They were tasty, and I lived.
Right now, I cannot watch the news at all, and I keep apprised of what is happening out there by reading headlines, and listening to some talk shows, not because I am in a high risk group (though I am), but because the pounding of the media, despite the statistics which dispute them, a knot will suddenly rise in my chest and my stomach drops. Some of the pundits who are certain of their position as the rest of us are not allowed to be, say that if you dispute the nature of the response and its perpetuation, that is total shutdown, you deserve to die. Maybe I shouldn't say what I think, because then I might die, and whether or not I died of Coronavirus, the pervasive "theys" would say, "See, she deserved it; she didn't believe rightly." Yeah, the magical thinking of my cooking life looms here too. So even though I am obeying the rules, my mere thinking that the measures might be over the top, and certainly my saying it, is tricky.
So, I can imagine those poor sods who still have a raging case of anxiety. What has been done to them, and even to me at some much smaller level, cannot be undone, even if things are opened up again. Human beings are walking bundles of germs. That isn't going to change when or if the authorities, and the scientists, none of them consistent from one day to the next, get a handle on this particular virus.
I don't see myself going out with a mask every day, after all of this. I have a terrible time wearing one, and taking back in my own breath and sweating into the material. But I know that I will never shake hands again. I said this in some other entry, that one of my psychological quirks (sometimes I wonder that I was ever able to function in life at all) was that I don't particularly like being touched (I am no David as in David and Lisa, an old film with Keir Dullea, but that film and his extreme difficulty always resonated with me) and I have never liked shaking hands, always aware of the transference of germs, particularly so when the other hand is wet. I have always been grateful for a dry hand, and made an effort to be sure that mine was dry. I have routinely gone into large venues, which never, perhaps oddly, particularly distressed me--maybe the need to ride subways and busses as a kid was a cognitive desensitizer--but will I again? At this point, more than seven or eight weeks not doing so, there is a part of me that is now accustomed to the absence. In his old age, my father never liked to go to public events. I am very much like he was in personality, so it is conceivable that I could easily forego them. And as the years have passed the routine of going to large concerts which was more so when I was young, has diminished significantly, except maybe for the Hollywood Bowl. But there is the movie theatre. I guess I can go when others are at work, when they go back to work. Usually the theatres are empty then. I don't know. As I said, I am a lot less obsessive about my health than I used to be, for all the therapy and other resources I took advantage of over the years, and maybe because with older age comes some soupcon of wisdom. And of course immersing myself in my religious faith, which, as also I have noted in prior entries, intellectually at least, I have come to accept that death is a door that leads to Eternal Life since the Act of Redemption. But I realize that with my--eccentricities still lurking--I am a walking contradiction, fearing and believing I need not fear.
Lawyers talk about reasonableness as a measure of action and lack thereof as a matter of liability. The question that has been flying about during the last nearly two months of course has been whether it was reasonable to shut down the world because of this particular disease. Lives were saved perhaps on one end. Lives were lost on another.
So, here I am, about to go back downstairs and get my hopefully now dried laundry. This time I will take at least my telephone. When I get back up here to my apartment, I should be safe, right?
Well, as long as a small plane doesn't crash into my apartment (happened on my old block some years ago; a man taking a nap in his bed was killed), or I don't slip in my bathroom and break something (about a year or so ago, I walked in, slid and fell on my ample butt, luckily), or die on the toilet (very common locale).
So, like Dennis says, "never" appears to be the reality of my, and your, absolute safety, even if we surround ourselves with bubble wrap, and close the society every time there is a virus. But we do the best we can. And it's all right, isn't it, if we disagree on what is the best way to do what is "reasonable"?
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