Tag: covid

MEDITATION 54

As I begin to write beside my customary candle, I am feeling cabined, cribbed and confined, as Macbeth would say. I have been asked to self-isolate according to the NHS Covid app on my phone. I have six out of seven days still to run as I received the message yesterday. 

Of course I have decided to obey the instruction, annoying though it is. When I delved into my personal data on the app, I discovered that whoever I came into contact with had declared a positive test yesterday, so, it must be said, the app is very efficient. But it is also, to the best of my knowledge, wrong. I was supposedly in contact with this person on Saturday. However, I never left my house on Saturday, so it was impossible for me to be in contact with anyone, except myself and I certainly haven’t had a positive test.

My annoyance, of course, stems from an injustice, petty though that injustice is. I am reminded of my career as a teacher. Children and young adults have an acute sense of injustice and, in my experience, more than most other things, it arouses an acute anger in them. So too with adults. The sense of being accused of something we didn’t do digs deep.   It did with me yesterday. I smarted at it. ‘My gorge rises at it’, as Shakespeare would say; well it did rise. It is like being in a lunchtime detention and angrily watching your schoolmates playing outside the classroom window.

The injustice is, as I have already mentioned, petty and slight. It is nothing compared with those who are imprisoned for something they haven’t done.  Or those who are incarcerated by oppressive regimes because of their political views, ethnicity, sexuality or religious faith. Neither have I been asked to shield for many months as so many have, with little opportunity to see loved ones. As I write this paragraph, I ask myself why I am complaining at all through this blog. 

As I think back to yesterday, it was the loss of personal freedom that annoyed me most. But then, it is only for a few days, I have a freezer that is replete with food and none of us are going far at the moment anyway. Marcus would tell me to persevere, to endure this present annoyance. 

But I have been asking myself why was this sudden loss of freedom so irksome to me? I think there were echoes of those first weeks of lockdown almost a year ago: the sudden changes imposed externally by the government, the return of a twinge of fear.

None of us likes to forego our liberty, It is something we have all battled with over the last gruelling months and we have perhaps, over time, been reduced to a tired resignation about it. But our liberty has to be gently pushed to one side in the medical emergency we are still in for the good of others. Just as having the vaccine (which I had two weeks ago) is not just to protect ourselves but also to protect others. So I am asked to self-isolate, even if erroneously, for the good of others, just in case. In the same way, we wear masks and drown our hands in cleansing fluid, just in case and as much for the good of others as for ourselves.

 I am reminded of one of those occasions when my aunt Barbara would show me some of her numerous volumes of photographs, while staying with her on holiday on Vancouver Island. She was showing me pictures of my childhood and there I was as a toddler in a walking harness with her young and glamorous self holding the reins behind me. ‘You were so cute’ she said to me, I remember. I must admit to a cringe of embarrassment. I did not like to be reminded I was a toddler once and barely out of babyhood. There I was with my fat little legs – they are more shapely now of course!  

In the photograph I was squirming in those walking reins and itching to move off, to walk away, to be free.  It is a natural impulse -to be free. But the reins were there to keep me from falling over, from harming myself. We, too, at this moment are itching to be free of the reins of lockdown, to move on. And perhaps, yesterday, I was squirming in those reins again, because I had suddenly been reminded of them. 

The weather has not been too cold to sit in my garden. Sitting there, I read these words. ‘Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.’  The words are not by Marcus Aurelius but Anne Frank, who was in hiding with her Jewish family behind a bookcase in concealed rooms above offices in Amsterdam from 1942-44 during the Nazi occupation. Self-isolation is nothing compared to what she endured with her family or afterwards, when she was discovered.

The great French novelist Marcel Proust (1877-1922) says ‘Turn your griefs, your suffering into ideas.’ A suitable creed for a writer, and so I have written this particular blog.  

But I am not grieving or suffering. I am only annoyed.  And, like all of us, I am weary with almost a year of various versions of lockdown. It is weariness, grumpiness, a fit of peak. My apologies. But if you read a blog, you must put up with the shifting emotions of the writer! 

Perhaps Marcus can help us to endure what will hopefully be the last phase of lockdown, however long or short that phase may be: ‘When you arise in the morning,think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive and breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.’

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – until the next blog!

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A selection of previous meditations is also available in audio form as ‘Meditations of Neilus Aurelius’ ASMR on YouTube. 

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Many thanks

MEDITATION 51 (CHRISTMAS SPECIAL)

I am sitting here beside my flickering candle contemplating a very different Christmas from last year. We are in another lockdown in all but name, which has been announced as suddenly as the first one in March. Therefore Christmas is likely to be a quiet and subdued holiday and a muted festival. Like many other normal events in the last months it will seem rather strange, no doubt, and unusual. 

Traditionally it is a time for families and friends to get together, as we well know.  Many people make great efforts to travel to be with their loved ones. But with new travel restrictions and restrictions on how many people can meet in one place, this is not really possible this year. Some will be spending Christmas alone for the first time. Christmas is the time of good cheer but this year that cheer will inevitably be tinged with sadness, especially for those who have lost loved ones to the pandemic.

Yesterday afternoon, I was wrapping gifts for my family, gifts that they will not be received tomorrow as I am now not able to travel to Leeds for our own family Christmas celebration. But rather than leaving the wrapping-up operation until whenever I will be able to travel to see them, I thought I would cheer myself up by doing it now while watching a Christmas old movie. It did cheer me up or rather I  felt a twinge of real Christmas cheer in my veins. 

The movie was a very old one -you know how I love my old movies – the 1933 version of ‘Little Women’ based on the 1868 novel by Louisa M. Alcott. The opening scenes are set at Christmas in New England and several winter scenes follow with deep snow covering pine and spruce trees, paths and gates and snowmen carefully crafted. It is a cosy opening, like a Christmas card and ideal Yuletide viewing.  

But the dramatic situation is not so cosy or comfortable underneath. For we are in the midst of the American Civil War and the March family (who are the central characters), though dwelling in a large rambling house,are living in genteel but straightened circumstances. The mother (Marmee) and four daughters (Jo, Beth, Amy and Meg) are also coping with the absence of Mr March, who is away fighting in the war. 

There have been three later film versions (including one this year) and all in colour of course. But this venerable black and white version, perhaps because it isn’t in lush colour, somehow captures the shabby atmosphere of the house and the family’s near genteel poverty the best. Led by Katherine Hepburn as the tomboy and would-be writer Jo (who gives one of her best and most natural performances in a long career), the actresses playing the family are a real ensemble and really convey their love for each other and their enjoyment of each other’s company.

From the opening moments, there is a sense of money being short. They are almost improvising Christmas, giving each other little gifts which mean so much because each one has meant a sacrifice of some kind or other for each of them. They are making an effort as best they can and are able to be charitable too, sharing their Christmas breakfast with a poor family down the road and spending Christmas morning with them.  

I remember this scene from when I was a child in junior school. Our teacher read it to us just before theChristmas break during story time at the end of the day. I remember the snug warm classroom, as daylight was dimming through the windows. I giggled at the wrong moment and she said to me, ‘Neil you are like a champagne cork popping.’ I had no idea what she meant as I didn’t know what champagne was, of course.Needless to say, I have rectified my ignorance on numerous occasions since! Starting with hunting in bags of wine gums, when still a child, for the champagne ones! 

The Marches remind me of the Cratchit family in Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ and Alcott, like Dickens, advocates charity to others, especially at Christmas time. No doubt she was influenced by his novel, which was published 25 years earlier.

The Cratchits are a larger family than the Marches and are much poorer. But, like the Marches, there is a real sense of them appreciating each other and everything about Christmas Day and the Christmas meal. It would be their most substantial meal of the year and Dickens is at pains to point out that they ate every scrap of the goose. A goose would be a low income family’s Christmas bird in the 1840’s. Turkeys were for more prosperous families and beef only for the wealthy. It is interesting that, after his change of heart, Scrooge buys the largest turkey for the Cratchits to replace their goose on the Christmas table. 

This year, because of the unusual situation we are living through, we are also improvising Christmas to some extent, like the Marches. But the basics of the celebration are still there even if we may not be able to see everyone as usual in person and will be using zoom or Skype or whatever platform to share their company instead. In that sense it will be a digital Christmas this year! 

There hasn’t been the opportunity for socialising, parties, and eating out. Or seeing a Christmas show or going to the movies.  It is a quiet and subdued Christmas this year, as I said at the beginning of this meditation. It is also an opportunity for us, like the Marches and the Cratchits to appreciate each other, to enjoy each others’ company, whether real or digital, and every moment of the Christmas celebration and everything about it.  For example, I have never appreciated receiving Christmas cards so much as this year.  

We must remember too that the event at the centre of our celebration, the birth of Christ, was itself a quiet and subdued affair. ‘How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given’ says the Carol ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem.’ 

With the new strain of the virus and numbers of those afflicted increasing, we are once again reminded of how fragile and vulnerable human life is, as fragile and vulnerable as the babe of Bethlehem. Yet that babe is our hope and our light. And the candles we light this Christmas are a symbol of light and of hope for a better New Year.

As Tiny Tim says: ‘Merry Christmas and God Bless Us Everyone!’  

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – until the next blog!

 If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up!

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

A selection of previous meditations is also available in audio form as ‘Meditations of Neilus Aurelius’ ASMR on YouTube. 

I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius