Being Quarantined

According to the brilliant and breezy British language expert Mark Forsyth, the word "quarantine just means forty." It's a shortened form of the Italian phrase meaning 40 days, as in Lent, as in the 40 days Jesus spent in the desert. It was first used in English in 1470 in reference to the Lenten experience, not to the plague.

This otherwise minor bit of information caught my attention because of the current coronavirus pandemic as well as my own semi-confinement due to pain and physical therapy in my home. In both cases, it seems, not being alarmed is the key.

It is very easy for me to become discouraged by my spinal stenosis and its effects on my legs.  I often fail to take in the comments of my therapist that I am doing well, making good progress. It seems like a hopeless battle at times.  Seeing others walk briskly down the street when I am seated at home, unable to walk very far, is upsetting--until I realize how much worse my situation might be, until I realize what fine attention I receive, and until I reflect that I am connected spiritually to a number of friends (and countless strangers) who are disabled.  I am not alone.

Most of them keep going, fighting the good fight. I am learning, after many years of good health, that my body has its limits but my mind and will are strong and can give me the positive energy I need to remain hopeful.  As Rilke wrote, "Just keep going; no feeling is final."

So it is with the constant media attention to the virus. As with the SARS epidemic, this, too, shall pass. We will endure, even with the inept "leadership" from the Trump administration.

So, as schools and games and conferences are cancelled and people quarantined, it is good to remember that fear makes everything, including our bodies, worse. And like the forty days of Lent, the present ordeal is only a temporary reminder to be patient and hopeful and to put our attention elsewhere.