I need some group advice as to how to structure my brain and emotions re: our COVID lockdown.
I fully understand that to contain this virus we need to lock our interactions down China style. No meeting up with friends, not having your son move from his household to his girlfriends household and then back to yours, no selfies and hugging with friends when you go out to meet up for a run, no going out for an allowed hike/bike and then getting into close proximity and continuing on anyway as if you’re powerless to do anything else once that situation arises.
Yet I literally see or hear of numerous people doing this daily- through talking with friends, or seeing their FB or Strava posts, or behaviors I observe when I go out on a solo ride or rabbiting with the dogs.
It makes me CRAZY ANGRY. To the point where some of the friends doing this, people who I know are intelligent enough to be understanding all this, are making me question whether I really want to be friends with them after all.
I see all these people doing this $hit and I know they’re going to push our healthcare system past it’s breaking point, and people are going to die. Why? Because you need to groom your FB persona to reflect that “you’re living your best life”? Because you feel like you can’t restrict your son from seeing his girlfriend for a few weeks? Because you just HAVE to ride with friends instead of your wife because that’s what you do?
Maybe it makes me angry in part because I need to go out into the world myself on a professional level. But I don’t think that’s it. I understand I could get infected, and there’s some chance I could die. That would suck but doesn’t particularly scare me.
Mostly I think it makes me angry because these are trivial pleasures people are chasing vs the huge impact this has on lives- people dying from the virus, healthcare workers pushed to their breaking point, all the terrible economic impact made worse than it needs be. I see my friends who live a relatively privledged life unable to make relatively tiny sacrifices- just stay home and don’t interact with anyone outside your household- they are unable or unwilling to do that. Damn the consequences to others and to our society.
If I could just stay home, I would. I’d turn off the information stream and just stay home and ignore it all to cope. But I can’t do that, I have to go out into the world, and at work I have to organize other people to try to keep them safe. So I find myself angry a lot, and in disbelief of what I see people doing. And when they’re people I know and formerly liked, now I find myself not liking them much.
So I need some advice as to how to see this and not be angry half of everyday. Maybe I just won’t be able to see some friends in the same light anymore, and I just need to accept that?