We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing. —Henry Charles Bukowski
27 DECEMBER—I stood in the parking lot of a local farmer’s market waiting for my companion who was chatting with the cashier inside. In the bottom of my bag lay a large carrot, two potatoes, a sweet potato, a shallot and a head of purple garlic. In a few hours they would be washed, chopped, tossed with olive oil and rosemary, and roasted for supper.
At the far end of the lot chickens strutted and scratched in the dirt of an outdoor poultry yard. They were an assortment of large and colorful birds—brown, black, white—well cared for and contented. I listened to their soft clucking and smiled, feeling content myself.
“You should wear a mask!” A voice shattered the pastoral peace.
Startled, I turned to see a gray-haired and masked woman advancing upon me.
“You should wear a mask!” she repeated, closing in.
I stared, struck dumb, so that the obvious question I might have asked—Why?—didn’t occur to me.
“You should wear a mask,” she said a third time, crossing into my personal space.
From out of the wild a tiger lunged. I took a step forward, lifted a warning finger, leaned in and screamed: “You step back! Now!”
She stepped back.
I stepped back.
The tiger twitched her tale and settled at my feet.
* * *
It was July a year ago when I first realized there might be invisible and extremely damaging long-term consequence attending the ubiquitous mask mandates—mandates I supported at the time. Proving I can be rather slow to comprehend what should be obvious.
I was sitting in the waiting room at a gynecology office when a baby began crying. The masked mother bent down and lifted her infant from a carrier to hold and comfort him. He kept on crying and in that instant I saw and understood something truly frightening: Oh my god! What are these masks doing to the brain development and socialization of infants and children?
With the exception of a properly fitted N95 mask, those we’ve been wearing these past two years offer very little protection from viral transmission—the cloth varieties provide none. I now wonder if masking is worth the significant social costs being exacted—not least to our fragile bonds with each other—costs that aren’t being adequately discussed or considered, so far as I can tell.
In the United States masks quickly became potent political symbols—and for many of us a means of virtue signaling. I understand very well the fear that can drive decisions and behavior. Indeed, I am guilty of having cast an outraged and malign eye at unmasked people during the early months of the pandemic.
Wherever masks are optional I now choose not to wear one. That decision is based on my own careful reading of the risks and benefits. Startling though it may seem, for me it is an educated decision and one I have taken great care in making. The situation is fluid and I may change my mind again. And of course others may make different educated decisions.
We face far greater and more intractable existential threats these days than those posed by the virus and I sometimes wonder if covid provides a convenient distraction, an excuse to ignore them—and to scapegoat others for our many fears.
In the land of Tigers
What might I have done differently? For several days I wondered, following that unprovoked and curious confrontation. Could I have been more patient? With more skill might I have engaged the woman in conversation? Should I have walked away? What would the Buddha have done? Or Jesus? Or indeed anyone with a less reactive limbic system?
Two decades of meditating had apparently done nothing to prepare me for that moment. How quickly and easily my equanimity had shattered. And yet… And yet. Only now do I appreciate that the tiger had stayed on a fairly tight leash.
Sitting down to begin this contemplation I expected to acknowledge my failings, to conclude how I might have done better, to identify what I should have done that would have been more compassionate and dignified.
But certainly there is dignity in a tiger. I for one would not want a world without them. However much we have tamed and domesticated ourselves and the planet we cannot escape the wisdom that tigers embody. Tigers don’t know about masks and viruses. But they do understand threats and the violation of territorial integrity. There is a time and a place for tigers.
Should
Although we were standing outside, at no point in the exchange did the other woman remove her mask. A strange and telling thing when one thinks about it. Masks have consequences. Almost certainly wearing one had emboldened the woman—unwisely, if I may suggest so. For me it made the situation feel far more threatening even as it enabled her to retain an unfriendly anonymity.
The sudden appearance of a tiger changed the dynamic and left both of us shaken. Backing down, she attempted to explain herself. Her suggestion that I wear a mask—if the word “should” can ever be interpreted as a suggestion—was so that I might protect myself, not from covid, but from the “grippe”—a virulent twenty-four hour flu going around.
Her use of the antiquated term was but another strange inflection in the altogether surreal encounter. I stared at her, again left speechless.
She couldn’t possibly have known how ludicrous her logic sounded, particularly to someone who had survived heart failure, who had spent fifteen years disabled by ME/CFS. I could almost have laughed.
Have we become so afraid and so comfortable with masking we now hope to protect ourselves from every illness? Ultimately, from death itself?
In the end I don’t know how or if I could have done things differently. But I do know I did my best and that I am no longer going to “should” myself about it. Indeed, it was an ignorant “should”—as so many “shoulds” are—that began the confrontation. (And what a good lesson that is for me.)
We “should” on ourselves and each other too much. Tigers know better.