In my own time, keep up on public policy and contact my politicians so they listen to science and reason, instead of oranges in ill-fitting suits.I don’t have the time outside of work and family to volunteer directly with nonprofits, but I have the fortune to connect with nonprofits through my work and develop opportunities. I work with medical students and my job is literally community engagement, so all my energy is going into supporting students through the traumatic/difficult experiences that COVID-19 is causing + creating service opportunities around public health.Grocery shopping, very carefully driving mom to an upcoming surgery, keeping the house surfaces clean, etc etc. Making sure my family is okay and has what they need (mom is high-risk, and I am beyond worried).Focus on 1-5 things that are withing your sphere of influence. Settle into your hobbit hole.įor those who have the ability, consider what more you can do. Showering, eating, and other forms of basic care – if you only have the spoons for a small amount of personal actions, take care of yourself. Listen, our most essential goal is survival. For some, COVID-19 is compounding their already existing conditions like anxiety and depression, or re-triggering old traumas. For some of us, chronic illness/disability, caregiving for loved ones, or other components of life can sometimes make just changing our clothes and getting out of bed difficult. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.” – Gandalf, The Return of the King “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. Determine what is in your scope of power and ability, but dare to dream. So what can we do, to be like Gandalf during COVID-19 Pandemic? 1. He learned pity and patience from Nienna, one of the Valar, and those lessons served him well in Middle-Earth. He didn’t always make friends because he asked hard questions and advocated for the right thing, which made people in power quite uncomfortable. He sought knowledge, from chatting with hobbits to deep discussions with the elves to scouring over books in the White City. Gandalf was practical and the quintessential man ( technically Maia) with a plan. Great evil has risen – not just the virus but the duplicitous fiends who run different areas of government and are essentially advocating for human sacrifice to sate the economy – or rather, their own multi-million and billion dollar accounts (not even Saruman was this evil). So if that feeling of powerlessness has been slowly sliding over you as lava slid over Gollum in his final moments, then I urge you to fight past that.
We can’t punch our way through very human maladies.īut we can do something – decide what to do with the time that is given to us. It’s why one of the most devastating episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is season 5’s “ The Body” where Buffy – the ‘chosen one’ gifted with supernatural abilities that has defeated every Big Bad that she’s met – comes home to find her mother dead of a simple brain aneurysm. It’s why many humans love all the various superhero themes in pop culture. Many hearts are gripped with terror thinking of what – or rather, who – we may have lost already or stand to lose – our loved ones, our own lives…and for some craven fools who are more kin to Nazgûl than human, their stock portfolios and profits.Ī dour feeling of powerlessness is sweeping across many folks – perhaps just in fleeting moments, like the sting of cold air across your cheek perhaps the acidic weight of dread that’s settled daily into your gut…among other emotions. We all wish that none of this had happened. In honor of Tolkien Reading Day (every March 25th, the same day that Frodo threw the One Ring into the Mount Doom’s gaping volcanic maw), I ask you to read the passage above to reflect.Ī global pandemic has come to us. – from The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide.
Frodo: “I wish the Ring had never come to me.