I was at an event and there was a guy there who was coughing- sneezing- looking like hell- clearly sick. I was angry of course. I am thinking, “I hate him, I think he should burn in hell for knowingly exposing everyone around him to illness, just to go out and do something fun.” But even as I silently cursed this stranger, I turned my critical eye inwards and, of course, realized I have done the same thing…

It weighs on me quite heavily now, but when I was sick with covid, I had an original infection, then a rebound. After the initial illness, I test myself 2x with rapid tests and with a second negative, I went about my life mask free. Even after I started getting renewed symptoms, I wrote it off as allergies. Even though Eric had actually rebounded before me, I kept thinking, it can’t be me too, there can’t be two rebounds in one house. And so, feeling a little scratchy-throated and worn down, I went out to a performance and sat for hours, sans mask, exposing everyone around me to what, 1 day later I realized, was a covid rebound infection.

And that wasn’t even the first time recently I had done something like this…there was also the time I had strep and couldn’t quite get my head around it in time to avoid exposing my in-laws. Blog here.

Of course I don’t want to get other people sick. I DO CARE. If I had known I had covid again, or strep, I never would have exposed people. But clearly there is something wrong with me, with my view, otherwise it wouldn’t be such a struggle for me to see and accept when I am sick. Why believe, when symptoms so clearly point to the contrary, that I am exempt?  Aren’t I human? Don’t I have a 4-e body? Its nature is to get sick, to shift into states of harboring viruses and bacteria. Diseases that I can pass on.

Today I was thinking more about it, and I recalled a time when I insisted we go on a long-planned camping vacation even when Eric was super sick. Or a time I insisted I go camping with friends even when I was sick. The problem is I cling. I fixate on ideas of the future I planned for, so sick or not, the plan can’t change. I fixate on a state of this body, it was healthy before, tested negative for covid just a day ago, so it can’t be sick now.  I am, from Mae Yo’s powerful example, that person that tries to put a stick in the water –suffering –as the river flows by.

Circumstances have changed, reality flows, but I am stuck. It is me clinging to my imagination of how things are, and are going to be, even as reality – sickness, symptoms – are hitting me right in the face.  

And this level of delusion is, of course, not without consequence. How terrible do I feel about exposing others to covid at that performance? Now I carry guilt and fear of the karma I will need to pay back. How bad do I feel I dragged Eric on vacation while he felt terribly sick? It haunts me, an example of being a bad and selfish partner. How shitty did I feel camping in the woods with friends instead of being home in my bed when I was sick?

This same tendency is at the heart of so much of my suffering… Why do I work so hard to get the things I want?  Because I cling to the imagination of what it will be like to have them in the future. Why stress over losing what I have?  Because I cling to any joy or comfort I get from those things in the present. And why am I so angry at the guy who showed-up to an event sick? Because I cling to this body, stress over losing it because without it I don’t get any of the futures that that have imagined, that I fixate on.

But even as I curse the sick stranger, hope he reaps the suffering he sows, I am suffering too. Suffering because I can’t let go. And because I can’t let go, I have done the same exact thing as he did. If he belongs in hell, so do I. And doubtlessly, I will end up there again as long as my delusion, my fixation, is guiding my actions.