Looking ahead: cower in place 23

verybody these days is struggling with new kinds of planning for the future. In the most basic sense, we are all doing what we think is needed to prevent a painful and debilitating disease from slowly claiming us, or someone we care about. I’ve found that my lizard brain—the oldest part of the brain, responsible for primitive survival instincts like fear—doesn’t really seem able to get the concept of catching the virus. I think about it a lot, sure, and it controls (or at least colors) every decision I make these days.

But the fear and anxiety that I feel is much more immediate: I feel fear about doing something that will disrupt the routine of safeguards that we’ve put in place. When I have anxiety dreams at night, they aren’t about getting sick, they’re about forgetting to wash my hands or change my clothes, or accidentally touching something, or being forced to call a repairman into our house*, or to visit a doctor.

My lizard-brain priorities make sense to me. Our survival mechanisms evolved to urge us away from behaviors that could kill us at that moment. Our higher thought processes are the ones devoted to working towards longer-term future goals. I’m gratified (I think) that I’ve internalized the threat posed by not washing my hands right down at the lizard level, so don’t have to rely on my logical Spock brain to keep me conscientious.

The part of my brain responsible for logical thinking already has plenty to keep it busy. Like grocery shopping. When I used to shop, I would forecast my meals and other needs about a week in advance. But now I buy my groceries online, and there’s sometimes a week or even two between when I order my stuff and when I get it. So I am now planning meals three or four weeks out.

Plus there’s the added complication that stores are often out of certain things (like toilet paper!), and I have to plan for the possibility that something I waited a couple of weeks for doesn’t arrive, and if I didn’t have contingency orders in, I’ll have to wait another couple of weeks for even the possibility of getting it.

We had luckily stocked up on toilet paper right before the decree went out that everyone should immediately go buy every existing roll, and we’ve been living on that stockpile ever since. I ordered some about six weeks ago from a place that promised they’d deliver it in six weeks, and did the same thing about four weeks ago. Plus every grocery store order I makes includes toilet paper on the list (and every grocery delivery so far has come in without said toilet paper). My strategy has been to keep requesting it in every venue, and hope something comes in before I’m all out. That time is getting closer.

Yesterday, Kathleen got a message from a well-stocked friend who’s offered to bring over some of the precious paper commodity, and we also got a call from our daughter who said she’s scored a source and is mailing some to us. Plus the 6-week and 4-week orders, and three grocery store orders, are all falling due in the next seven days. So by this time next week, we’ll either have more t.p. than we know what to do with, or have almost none at all, or somewhere in between. At this point my ability to forecast my situation has completely broken down. But we’re not out of t.p. yet, so my lizard brain is still completely happy.

Let me switch to a more serious kind of forecasting for a minute, where my lizard brain falls short. We’ve all been seeing or hearing forecasts of when the number of coronavirus cases will start to go down, so we can start going back to work, seeing family members, and generally resuming something of our former lifestyles. The need to protect ourselves and our loved ones from both illness and from joblessness and poverty affects us on both the logical and the visceral level.

And unfortunately, for many there’s no clear way to do both. Many jobs require human contact, but resuming higher human contact levels is forecast to increase the severity of the pandemic.

But not resuming increased human contact means that the jobs that require it can’t fully (or even partially, sometimes) reopen. And these businesses are running out of time—most have less than 30 days of buffer funds.

Clearly some middle course is needed that will keep both the threat of disease flareup and the threat of bankruptcy and penury at minimum possible levels, but this sort of balancing is not something that our lizard brains do very well. We, all of us, need to work as hard a possible to find a solution that is reasonable for everyone, and not just comforting to our emotions. It’s hard to keep our lizard brains in check when very real threats are all around us, but we’ve just got to try!

Thanks,
Dorn
4/24/2020