Can You Hear Me Now?
Copper, the feline matriarch of our household, circles my feet as I move into the Downward Dog pose. My four-legged yoga coach for going on five years now, she checks my form and balance before settling herself right where my palms need to be on the floor and assumes a pose of her own, Cat Must Groom Herself NOW, showing off a flexibility I can’t even dream of.
Such a scene is, more or less, how I start my days. The sun is still just a good idea and on its way to slowly pushing the dark canopy of stars aside, the house sits a quiet and protective shell around us and everything we’ve collected so far, and except for that one floorboard in the bedroom near the hutch that protests my weight as I step about in the darkness to gather my socks (peeled off and flung out from under the covers hours ago), not a sound pierces the air I’m breathing. Yet another moment I’d like to suspend in time, on the same list as holding Patrick’s hand after dinner and savoring the last sips of a most excellent and rich Argentinian Malbec.
It’s been a rather loud and raucous week (yes, that includes the first presidential debate).
At work, most if not all of our meetings are virtual as we continue to hunker down in our respective offices (some of them doubling as our bedrooms where we sleep). In my work office, I raise my voice and face the computer monitor on my desk, speaking into the screen, though I know the mic is actually located on the laptop anchored to a docking station just off to the right of my desk set-up. I wonder how that sounds to those listening? Like I’m tense or angry or forcefully trying to make my point, persuade them out of their own ideas? Not my intention at all, but I feel as if I’m throwing my full body weight into these discussions and when they’re done, sometimes I need a short walk outside just to shift the energy into a calmer place.
When I do go out in public, mostly for medical or must-be-done-in-person business transactions, I feel like I’m yelling through two layers of cotton, as if that will help me convey more accurately the intended message, and I’ve noticed that I’m forming the shape of the words on my lips more deliberately, even though no one can see the effort. I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard to tell someone I’d like those test results emailed to me, or I don’t need a car wash today, just the oil changed, thank you. Pre-pandemic, I’m sure communication was challenging at times, but these past several months, it’s become a real workout. I so want to be understood, to be heard, to have my words and messages land as I hope they will—clearly, kindly, with a good heart behind them. That’s easier without the mask and a six-foot canyon between us, where tone and facial expressions can drop off the ledges and disappear into a craggy maw of misunderstanding. But my concern for the health of my fellow humans is still more important than my interpersonal communicative convenience, so I plod along, masked and far away, wondering if my eyes, eyebrows and forehead can bear the added weight of conveying those meaning-defining nonverbal cues.
Remember when we used to be able to whisper? When we could be that close? When meetings we attended gave us full access to the information we needed and our clarifying questions were minimal? When our throats weren’t dry from breathing in lint and shouting, and we knew what each other’s teeth looked like? (Diastemas, coffee-stained enamel and all. What a perfect time to have braces and not be self-conscious about smiling). This has been technology’s finest hour in so many ways—giving us video chats and helping us sharpen our texting game. But when the internet connection decides to go on vacation in the middle of an online training, or our physician’s audio cuts out during our telehealth appointment just as she’s outlining a treatment plan, we’re reminded that even the intricate wizardry of a motherboard has its limitations. Turning up the volume isn’t going to add anything helpful here, except perhaps draining the pressure valve on some pent-up frustration.
As a species, we’re normally a noisy bunch, and sound-mapping studies before and after pandemic-related lockdowns revealed the impact of not going about our loud business day after day. Birdsong and other natural sounds landed more distinctly on our ears, as global transportation’s relentless hum shrank to almost nothing. It fed both our hunger for silence and stillness and our anxiety about those same aspects of the human enterprise; some of us still navigate the tension between them. If that feels and sounds like your current situation, I encourage you to take a few steps back and let yourselves remember that we’re all still new to How You Carry On During A Global Pandemic. The playbook for all of this is being written as we’re living through it. Perhaps the silence is the gift that offers a chance to hear what we’ve been missing (which may be nothing at all, and that’s not a bad thing), and the stillness an opportunity to give our frantic, ever-cycling minds a healing pause. Unsettling, I know, but good medicine nonetheless.
Someday, dear friends, we will get to stand closer together like we used to, our smiles (laced with braces and diastemas and coffee-tinted teeth) in full view and our entire faces working those nonverbals for all they’re worth. We’ll get to add touch to our conversations, throw our heads back to get the most of an unmasked guffaw in response to a brilliantly-landed punch line, and not look over our shoulders at a cautionary medical finger saying “not yet, it’s not safe”. We will emerge on the other side of this, wiser for having wrapped our arms willingly around the gift of a temporary near-soundless existence, slowing our steps to a more attentive pace.
Until then, morning yoga with a learned feline coach is just one coping strategy.
What’s yours?
