Wait

These are stressful times in many ways.  Not that life in 2019 was hunky-dory, before pandemic became a household word in 2020.  Living has never been without stress, but COVID-19 has taken us all to a whole new level of stress.

Prior to the global pandemic, America had already been dealing with a host of pervasive stressors such as health care access, mass shootings, climate change, rising suicide rates, and an opioid epidemic. Fast forward to the present day, as our country continues to struggle with our new reality amidst the global pandemic, select groups of our country are facing greater stress and poorer outcomes.

A few months ago, in my Twitter feed, I read a comedian's comment that the coronavirus has made us forget mass shootings because we are not gathering in groups anywhere now--not in schools, churches, movie halls, and open-air concerts, which have all been the favored venues for the armed sociopaths.

Re-working another comedian's joke, I wonder how many of us ever thought in 2019 that it was one heck of a good year and that the year that followed--2020--would suck.

We feel acedia.  We feel lots of things.  We are dealing with stress.  

[Many] Americans are taking their anxiety, frustration, anger and stress out on their jaws and teeth. “There’s effectively an epidemic of jaw muscle pain in the country right now because of COVID,” said Dr. Mark Drangsholt, chair of the Department of Oral Medicine at the University of Washington’s School of Dentistry.

I suppose the jaw, not the entire face, is the index of the mind!

Here's one easy way to unclench your jaw, and to put your worries and stress aside.

Listen to Wait, read aloud by Amanda Holmes.

Maria Popova writes that Galway Kinnell's poem addresses the "elemental question of existence with extraordinary compassion and spiritual grace in a poem he wrote for a student of his who was contemplating suicide after the abrupt end of a romance."

The poem works for any kind of disappointment, frustration, stress, anxiety, anger, ...