I took another masked walk today, this time with a friend on a nearby nature trail. We both wore masks. As you can see, this little one did not.
She's looking pretty wild these days. She was supposed to get a grooming today but the groomer was sick so we rescheduled for tomorrow (with a different groomer from the same company). That made me free to take a long nature walk today.
Along the way we passed a lot of people with masks and as many without. It was interesting seeing who chose to wear them and who chose not to. One thing people did was keep pretty good distance even in passing. Much better than my last nature walk.
It felt completely different though for one sole reason, that I was the one wearing a mask!
It didn't make me feel any fear to have people pass close by this time the way it did the last time, simply because I had a mask on myself today.
I heard this wonderful spiritual teacher say the other day that wearing a mask was an act of compassion in putting at ease anyone immune compromised who may be in great fear of infection, but sometimes needing to be able to go outside (or wanting to). That resonated with me. I am happy to signal that I care enough about them to inconvenience myself by wearing the mask, despite my thinking I'm young and healthy enough to not be at risk of serious illness if I am exposed to it.
What I discovered today is that it is actually an act of compassion toward myself as well! However low-fi, there is some degree of fear I feel when out in crowds without a mask on, even though it has to be psychological, because it isn't an N95 respirator. Really it only protects others from me, and even that only if I was actually infectious. That's pretty unlikely given how well I've been doing social distancing since the first week of Feb., before lockdown even started here.
A lot of this is perception and emotion.
Again, I give you someone completely unbothered.
I tried to also catch a shot of a hawk who was fly-walking with us from tree to tree, but he was too fast for me. He also seemed completely oblivious to the idea of a pandemic, though his social distancing was top-notch.
All of it highlights for me more and more clearly just how much we're all winging it with this. We don't really know how to respond in this new territory.
Being with the uncertainty is hard. It makes a lot of people flee into theories that promise clarity and known enemies, but that's just an illusion as much as my cloth mask doing much for anyone today when it comes to physical reality. Not knocking emotional meaning, because emotional stress can have a physical effect too. But direct physical effect, well I would have to have it for it to have actually protected anyone and again, the mask I wear can't protect me unless it's a N95.
Well, just thoughts I'm thinking as I try to sort out what feels right to me in all this. Ask me again next week and I reserve the right to tell you something completely different.
And so it is.
@porters here on behalf of @NaturalMedicine – That is a good way of looking at wearing a mask, as an act of compassion! Fortunately we live in a low populous area where we don't see people very often and it is easy to social distance if we do run into someone on our walk. Keep well and thanks for sharing!
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You are for many reasons fortunate to live in a sparsely populated area!