We all know how tough it is these days. Not going out very much or only getting to see some people via video chat using Zoom or FaceTime. There are challenges if you live with people, or have a family, but the challenges are a little different for me now that I’m living alone, by myself for the first time since I was 26 years-old. There is no real schedule or even a reason to get up since I’m not teaching during the summer. Yes, I have work to do—research, writing, reviewing others’ work-- but it doesn’t seem as urgent or important while we all reassess what really matters personally, professionally and in society overall.

So, I’ve made a list of ten things I try to do to overcome it all:

1.) Get up and out of bed! Easier said than done since I usually don’t have to be anywhere or do anything in the morning. But I feel the need to fill the empty hours and to find purpose. Yes, there’s work I’d rather put off, but I can’t just lie around. It’s boring and not very relaxing. And the longer I lie in bed, the longer I have to think of things that make me anxious. So now, before going to sleep, I purposely pull the shade down just enough so that the morning light will shine through, wake me and urge me to get up!

2.) Take a shower!  Not as easy as you might think. Seems like too much of an effort. Besides, who is going to see me or smell me? But I do find taking a shower can make one feel refreshed and ready to start anew. 

3.) Get dressed! I’ve got a closet full of clothes, but every day I’m wearing the same ratty old exercise outfit, t-shirts and leggings. They bore me and I have to constantly wash them. Maybe, instead, at least one day a week, I should actually put on nice clothes, or at least a top (since no one can see anything else on Zoom). I could put on lipstick, mascara, and even earrings. But I am torn. I don’t want to seem vain, but I don’t want to continue looking like a depressed version of myself either. 

4.) Reduce Anxiety. Start every day by sitting in my soft blue chair for a few minutes. Look at the sky, the Hudson River, and breathe. Try to get rid of my anxious morning thoughts. I should think of this as an attempt at meditation, pathetic as it might seem. 

5.)  Practice gratitude. Remind myself of the following things I am grateful for: 

a. That I’m alive and well and have a chance for another day.

b. That I have family and friends who love me and who I love in return. I feel their presence in my life even though I cannot see them face to face and don’t know when I will be able to.

c. That my husband died before Coronavirus hit us. I am so relieved that Tony died at home, with me there and our son holding him, his spirit going peacefully after a long and horrible illness. My aides tell me that they would not have been able to come to take care of him and that the nursing homes would not have admitted him during the pandemic. I feel the timing of his death was indeed a blessing for both of us.

d. That my brain is becoming active again as I’m starting to read, think and write. Maybe I’ll write a book about the history of Exceptionalism. Regularly tell myself that I still have something important to do and believe it. 

6.) Bust a move! Thankfully, I am physically able to do a few exercises before starting the day. Nothing crazy, just three or four simple Qi Gong movements and stretches, along with some pilates. And I don’t spend more than 10 minutes doing so because I just get impatient to get to work! 

7.) Lunch properly. At the moments I can only fit in a quick lunch, I make a point to avoid eating from a storage container while standing at the kitchen counter! 

8.) Get out and about. I try to take walks, even if it means braving the elevator for twenty-six floors and a corridor where I’ll have to pass people. Is it more dangerous not to go out and walk or to share an elevator with more people than I’m comfortable with? I try not to obsess about such danger!!! Even so, maybe it would be better to get a Bose Wave so I can dance to my Zydeco cd’s instead. 

9.) Eat well. After a day’s work I have some good food, red wine or my “Asarita” (silver tequila, ice and the juice of a whole fresh lime). My pilates instructor recently told me that a fresh lime is a great deodorant! A new ad for margharita’s, “Drink and don’t stink.”(?) How fortunate to cook a delicious and healthy dinner, trying different tastes every night. It’s hard living alone to cook, especially since food is best when shared. But I am grateful for every meal and don’t take it for granted. There is so much hunger (or, as they call it, “food insecurity”). To eat is to celebrate as well as sustain life. Try to not rush, I tell myself. Slow down! 

10.) Stop bingeing on Netflix! Though it has been serving a purpose—I just loved Schitt’s Creek, and yes Tiger King—but  some serials (for example, Broadchurch or Dr. Foster) are addictive and keep me up past midnight, which was a good thing when we had fireworks going off for hours in the neighborhood, week after week. I’ve never liked watching TV at night—I’ve always felt it a waste of time. And here I am. I thought it would relax me, but the really addictive, suspenseful ones don’t! Each episode ends with a cliffhanger, so I want to go on to the next episode, and then the next, like an alcoholic who can’t stop at one or two drinks. Am I expanding the things I take pleasure in or self-medicating? Promise yourself to do with Netflix what you do with your daily wine. Limit it. And I’ll take the pledge and try my best to do the same!

I hope you might find these actions as helpful as they are proving to be for me, since, as they say, we are in this alone together!

In the past, I’ve written about my failed meditation retreat in the late 1990s at a nun’s convent in Connecticut. I also didn’t do spectacularly well during a few Jewish retreats and one led by a Buddhist Zen master in Illinois. But I really try, always thinking I’ll be able to relax and find that place of inner peace. I actually start most days briefly meditating for about five minutes. But recently, I felt I needed something more.

Perhaps, I thought, it would help during this difficult time if I participate in a session with a former rabbi of mine who now lives in Costa Rica doing mindfulness and spiritual growth workshops. I find him amazing and his words touch my soul. So, when I learned he was doing a workshop centered on a couple of verses from Genesis, the focus seemed perfect for me: Torah and mindfulness.

I didn’t know, though, that most of it would be guided meditation, and once we began, I immediately became worried.  “Close your eyes. I want you to visualize a time where you’ve felt comfortable, happy, secure,” he said. “A place, maybe from childhood, maybe in nature,” he continued in his beautiful soothing voice. Then he said, “there is a door. Open it, and now go deeper, deeper, step by step into a place of even greater comfort.”  I was already in trouble. I couldn’t visualize a place or a time that made me feel entirely comfortable. I was blocked (but surely there had been a time; I just couldn’t think!). I was getting more tense by the moment as I tried hard to imagine this place or time. I opened one eye a little, just to see how everyone else was doing! They all looked so calm, arms and legs relaxed, hands open. The sight of them made me feel even more like a failure.

I remembered my husband Tony’s one attempt at meditation with a leader who told the group, “visualize a person or figure that made you happy,” and he couldn’t. All Tony could think of (with his awful sense of humor) was frosty the snowman! I then smiled as I thought of that and completely lost my concentration. “Go deeper ‘til you are at the deepest place, sitting perhaps in a very comfortable chair, surrounded by cushions,” said the rabbi. Obsessed with my inability to have even made the first step, I could hardly wait until the meditation was over.

We then journaled about our feelings. My notes were all about feeling like a failure and how I’ve never been able to fully, totally relax and surrender myself. Should I share these thoughts? Would it be expressing my “truth” as the rabbi said? Or would it be sacrilege? I wondered if I should do the next session the following week. Maybe with practice, I could do this. But this other voice inside said, “No, you are not meant for this,” and I felt depressed and disappointed.

The next day, however, I felt surprisingly better.

Around 7pm, Friday evening, I was sitting in my soft blue chair—the chair I had reupholstered after Tony died—sipping a glass of Tuscan red wine in a crystal wine glass. I thought, this is nice, the color of the red wine in the crystal. I looked up and on the walls and ceiling of my apartment, there were rainbows and prisms, some tiny, some large, even oblong, scattered around as the sun moved closer to the horizon, the light sparking off the crystals hanging by the window. These displays of rainbows only last for about ten or fifteen minutes and only happen for a few months of the year, when the sun is perfectly aligned. It always feels like a miracle to me.

I sat there in my sky-blue chair, watching the sun slowly set, the sky turning orange, pink, crimson, dark grey, dark blue, constantly changing and shifting. I was transfixed. It is the summer solstice, when the sunsets go on for over an hour making the sky so beautiful and hypnotizing.

With that, I noticed I felt calm and at peace. My whole body was relaxed in my soft chair, its down cushions both enveloping and supporting me. This is what I could not feel in a guided group meditation. Maybe this is the place, this is the time. Not something from the past but now, in the apartment I have transformed into a place of beauty and color and texture, a place where I feel comfortable and protected. Maybe this will be a turning point for me.

Suddenly, I realized something that brought me to tears. When Tony died six months earlier, it had been the winter solstice, and he passed right after sunset. For months afterwards, I would sink into sadness as the sun set, and the sadness would linger for the evening. But now it was the summer solstice. It felt like a sudden revelation and the kind of thing John Donne could have written a poem about.

My overly active mind can make me feel overwhelmed with anxiety about the future, but it is also capable of recognizing patterns that make meaning out of the world. Perhaps this alignment of the universe will symbolize a hopeful realignment in my life.

I sat there for a long time, surrounded by light and color, my spirit lifted by the view. I was alone, but I was fine. Maybe this might be my new practice, at least until the days get shorter. Sitting here in my chair, looking west over the Hudson for a few minutes in the morning as the rising sun shines on the Palisades above the river, and then again in the evening watching the sun set and scatter color all around me. Kind of like morning and evening prayers.

My experience that evening made me feel grateful to be alive, to experience such beauty, even if it’s transient. I am happy to live in this place where, even if it has been the epicenter of the Coronavirus, I am comfortable, safe, and during such moments, at peace.