Serve, Redux

Redux:  Redone, restored, brought back, or revisited.

Grief:  Denial - Anger - Bargaining - Depression - Acceptance.

I think I'm back to being pissed off about the pandemic.  It seemed to me - with good leadership and a reverence for science - that we could have been past the worst of the crisis instead of on a vicious upswing.  The experience of other 1st World countries with engaged leaders and respect for scientific facts confirm this.  The things I like to do - travel on airplanes, attend theater and live music, go to art museums, scarf down ethnic dining - are severely curtailed or gone and I believe I'm blaming others for this.  Unfortunately, I'm sort of right, too, which is really fueling my resentment machine.

The vaccine is the key.

OK, that was a pissy rant I needed to get off my chest - now back to service.  I have to laugh at myself when I imagine what being of service entails.  My reveries usually end up with something grandiose - bringing a drug addict back from the brink of death, wowing a large group with a brilliant lead, guiding a group with wisdom and skill, and other things I've never done.

I start each day with a number of affirmations.  One important one is that I be shown how to be of service to someone.  I leave this deliberately vague.  I figure that god doesn't need me to tell him what I think he needs me to do, or something.  The results usually surprise me.

SuperK and I have a mutual friend who has been sober a long time.  She's a bit of a disorganized hoarder and she gets flustered rather easily.  She was having trouble filling out her unemployment forms and asked me if I could give her a hand.  We connected on Zoom where I could see she was distracted and nervous, shuffling papers, looking at her phone and at her computer screen, while I asked some questions I thought might help move things along, but all I was doing was adding to her frustration.  I realized I just needed to sit there quietly while she figured things out.  This added to my frustration because my good, linear, logical German brain wanted to take solid, logical steps to a successful conclusion.  I forget that people like to figure out things on their own.  We came up with three or four things she might do in an increasing level of difficulty.  She was very, very, incredibly grateful.

I saw her on a meeting the next day.  She had done the easiest of the options and I could clearly see she was much, much more relaxed.  This was, of course, something she come have easily thought of all by herself - indeed, she had mentioned it during our talk.  She didn't need me to solve shit - she needed a patient friend to hold her virtual hand while she figured out what to do.  This step may work and may not.   She knows that if it doesn't she/we can move on to another potential solution.

That was it.  Sit patiently (or sort of patiently) and provide moral support.