Managing Life during the Pandemic

This spring, I was asked by the Happy Valley Library and the Lake Oswego Parks and Recreation Department to offer several weeks of Mindfulness programs to serve their communities while they coped with the global COVID-19 pandemic. I learned that as people began dealing with the “new normal,” they felt that their lives were turned abnormally “upside down.” This topsy-turvy world caused great stress.
 
How can Mindfulness help us live in this unfamiliar world we find ourselves in? Mindfulness is designed to address real life challenges. I hope that this blog would help you in dealing with the uncertainty and changes we face during these extraordinary times as well as when we can feel the rhythms of normalcy in our daily lives.
 
Mindfulness practice is not just about sitting in meditation; it also embodies the following aspects:

• Goal: The aim of Mindfulness is to align with the goal of attaining well-being and happiness in life.
• Meditation: The purpose of mind exercise to develop our own capacity for mind control and to gain insight.
• Skillful Means: The good news is that we can gain proficiency in utilizing our mental resources to overcome suffering.
• Insight & Wisdom: These tools of self-knowledge guide us to learn the truth about reality and how things actually are.
• Ethics: Moral principles are necessary to create both the internal and the external environments conducive to happiness.
• Scientific Perspective: Science is rooted in predictable, replicable and reliable methods — not based on mere beliefs.

 
So, how can Mindfulness practice can be used in overcoming the stress from radical changes to our lives during this pandemic? Insight into the nature of reality reveals that change is the norm and not an exception. Some changes are gradual and harder to notice, while others are radical.
 
If you look carefully into nature, you’ll realize that everything changes. Just look at your own body. It is always changing: skin tone, hair loss, weight changes, aging, etc. If we don’t notice some of these subtle changes, we may become deluded into thinking and wishing that things remain the same — a false concept of normalcy.
 
The notion of things changing as not being normal is neither scientific nor realistic. It is downright incorrect. As we come to understand that reality is in constant flux, we lose our aversion to change — a major cause of stress. Also, we when learn not to cling to how things were, another stress factor is gone.
 
Biology and neuroscience provide good answers to the delusion that things should remain the same. All organisms, including human beings strive for reliability, dependability, sustainability, predictability and normalcy for survival purposes. The more difficult it is for an organism to predict and rely on its knowledge about its environment, the harder it is for that organism to survive. Humans, a species that has adapted to so many different types of environments around the world for centuries, are designed for survival and not for happiness. However, we have the capacity, through our neocortex, to regulate emotions for happiness.

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In dealing with loneliness as an outcome of social distancing, for example, we can focus on the aspects of Wisdom and Skillful Means of mindfulness practice and use them to overcome the stress of loneliness and to cultivate happiness. Here’s how:
 
Relativity: There are many levels of loneliness. You may come to realize that your condition is not so bad compared to what others in solitary confinement or torture chambers, for example, may be experiencing. Imagine what the late Senator John McCain experienced as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
 
Options for connectivity: Humans are a social species and our connections to people are essential for us to survive. In the midst of this global pandemic, however, it is wise from a public health perspective to maintain social distance. Yet there are so many different ways that you can still connect with people: phone calls, virtual meetings, meeting outdoors six-feet apart with masks on, waving hello to people you pass by on daily walks, etc.
 
Focus on interconnectedness: You can choose to focus your mind not on the loneliness, but on the interconnectedness of your being with everything that is in nature — wild animals, birds, insects, flowers, trees, the weather, etc. Nature is always interacting with you in this universe of life experience; you are in this together all the time. You even breathe in and out the air that we all share.
 
Focus on the positive: The time away from commuting and meetings that you now have, for example, provides you with the gift of time for you to do things that you did not have time for before, things that can improve your well-being. For example, you can clean your home and do repairs, learn how to cook or sew or paint, read more books or take online classes, etc.
 
Practice is the practice. With practice you can reorient your mind and train it to look at things and phenomena that help you to overcome suffering and to cultivate happiness. Our brains are neuroplastic, which means that we can guide our brains to change in response to experience and create more positive neural connections. Regular meditation is a way to exercise your mind to help you develop these coping skills and to deal with life challenges beyond loneliness.
 
Think of it this way: your life must end. Why not be happy now? Is it better to feel miserable? Isn’t it better to live happily every day and savor this limited life experience on earth and fill it with the richness and joy of living? Let’s make this life worth living and kick the can of stress.
All good wishes for a healthy and happier New Year!

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