When the pandemic first hit, like most of us, I didn’t know what to think, or do. In times like that, I usually lean on creative projects to both occupy my mind, and help me figure out what I’m feeling. Painting, making music, videos, writing—they all help me process in slightly different ways. Unfortunately, at the dawn of the pandemic, I had a bad case of shingles in my eye, so I was pretty miserable, physically, and the only thing I could come up with, creatively, was to write. So I sat down with my little college ruled spiral bound 4x6 notebook and Bic pen and scribbled away. And the thing that kept coming up for me in the writing, was the idea of stillness. The pandemic had forced a fair portion of society to grind to a halt, including a lot of people, like me, who “sheltered in place.” It was a kind of forced stillness, and I don’t know about you, but it made me very antsy, very anxious. My normal, prior to that moment, was: traveling for work, long to-do lists with errands, trips here and there, and all manner of things that took me all around the town, and made me feel like I was “doing something.” As in, if I didn’t have a 12-foot scroll of a to-do list, then I wasn’t doing anything at all. In other words, I’d feel totally useless. I think some of us have figured out by now that hyper-productivity does not equal meaning in your life. But when we get still and start to reflect—that can be a scary place too. What if we find out there is no meaning!? I ended up writing, and submitting, the essay below in late 2020. It’s rough, has no title, and obviously was rejected. But it’s still interesting to me when I re-read it. I was working at an environmental organization at the time, so environmental issues were always on my mind, and though it doesn’t say what does help you to find meaning in your life, I do think that if you never give yourself the chance to experience stillness and reflection, you might have a hard time figuring it out.
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There’s a science fiction story I have been wanting to write for a long time. The thing about sci-fi, though, is that if you wait long enough, sometimes the story comes true.
My story idea was this: create a connected global world where every day, at the same hour everywhere around the world, everything and everyone stops what they are doing, and sits still where they are. For one hour.
When I first came up with the premise, my thinking was motivated by global warming. I wondered: if all industry stopped for an hour every day, how much Co2 would be kept from entering the atmosphere? Would it be significant? Would it help curb warming trends? I wondered if it was possible to keep on with business-as-usual, altered only in this one, small way, yet see planetary improvements.
March 20, 2020. Many of us sheltering-in-place, most of us quarantining ourselves because of local or national ordinances, or because of the social contract we share with others in the society. The powers that be had spoken: Don’t just do something, sit there!
And it turns out, my story premise held a little water. NASA, which measures Co2 from space, showed that efforts to slow the spread of the virus had some unintended consequences: air pollution and Co2 levels were dropping.
But even with these early satellite images, it’s still just a premise, not a story. And as many people I greatly respect have said: the death of our fellow human beings is not the path to a cleaner, more just environment.
One goal of fiction is to get us thinking about things. And as I kept thinking about the premise, and how I might actually develop it into a story, I quickly realized that the environmental aspect—just like the reduced carbon emissions during this global pandemic—was merely an unintended consequence of the premise.
The main point of the story—which is also an important lesson for this moment—was learning how to be. To stop being “productive” for an hour every day and just be with people, to see what might happen.
When I was in seminary, I took a class about parent-child relations. One day, we were learning about parent-child gazing—you know, that thing where parents just can’t stop looking at their baby. And the baby looks back. And the two are locked together in a bubble, just eyeballs back and forth and back and forth. Our class wanted to test our ability to be with each other in the same way parents and infants are.
So we paired off, and the instruction was: look into each other’s eyes. No talking, just looking into each other eyes. After about 15 seconds, most of us were uncomfortable. Some of us had to hold back laughter. Our eyes were tearing up (we were allowed to blink, this wasn’t a staring contest, it was real looking, presence of body, heart and mind). There was much shifting in seats. A few made it a full minute. I wasn’t one of them. (I think now of that wonderful moment in Won’t You Be My Neighbor where Mr. Roger’s shows us, by stillness, what a minute feels like. For some of us, excruciating).
Before the experiment, I was convinced it was going to be easy. After, I was astounded by how hard it was just to be with another person. Then I felt sad: the one thing we know we’re here on the planet for—to be with each other—is the one thing it seems we don’t do very well.
Back to my story premise: What if we did all know how to do it—be with others, starting with ourselves? Not the self we watch TV with, or read with, or look at our phone with, or flip through something or other with. But the self just being with itself? When’s the last time you sat still, or stood looking out a window, your eyes not focused on anything in particular; your mind not tripped on anything in particular. Not snacking, or high on anything?
What if we all knew how to be with one another? Not doing something together, not eating or watching TV or talking with each other. Not sharing a glass of wine or a blunt or CBD vape. But just being together, still and quiet?
After the initial anxiety of not doing something wore off—which could take a minute given that many of us micromanage every second of our existence with a to-do list—would we learn anything about our society? Ourselves? About our purpose and meaning? About what truly matters to us, as in: the thing we really want to be focusing our attention on? What would the unintended consequences of stillness be on ourselves, our neighbors, our planet? Would our to-do list be as long? Would the items on it be the same? Would we change?
I haven’t written the story yet, so I honestly don’t know.
—MBF