The Struggle to Deal with the Small Stuff in the Big Mess

There is a joy in doing good things and keeping them to yourself. However, there is not as much room in my life for the secret and sacred joys as there used to be. So I am going to tell the story of some good I was able to do in the midst of dealing with this corona virus pandemic. Maybe it will inspire other people to do good as well.

I am blessed to be able to work on this blog. The fact that I am blogging here indicates that a great number of aspects of my life and environment are still working. It is a time to have a perspective on the things that we are dealing with that transcends our sense of the urgent. I have had a lot of little challenges to deal with and I am a worrier by nature. I can abandon myself to an adventure if it is the right kind of adventure and I can bear up under suffering of certain kinds. But sitting at home alone this much makes me prone to think quite a bit about my aches, pains and frustrations. I do not lack for aches, pains and frustrations right now,

I recently was able to send some money to a friend in the Philippines who is suddenly quarantined with her extended family in their compound and only one has a real un-quarantined job. She explained all the reasons she was food insecure and with the help of my family in Family Missions Company and a little giving on my part we were able to get her some supplies and she in turn is adding the fruit of her garden and some of these staples in a smaller but really needed gift to the needy compounds on either side. That is about all   I myself can really do for the worldwide crisis.

When one considers the vast tragedy moving forward across the world these tiny efforts do not seem like much. I have also tried to bring attention to the bigger efforts of parties with greater resources. But the party involved not only acted responsibly for her own extended family but reached out to help  food insecure neighbors.  For me lately that is more success than I have been able to hope  for as a normal result — many of my efforts have been lost in various forms of chaos. So I was happy about that.

Now most readers will surmise that I do not have the gold standard of accountability and transparency in this  little bit of charity but I feel pretty good about it. In my last post I mentioned the gratitude that I sincerely feel to the federal governnment of the United States and its leaders for the help I have gotten. I am also grateful to Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards and the people at Louisiana Workforce  for the way they have expedited unemployment benefits so far. But I worry about whether I will get the benefits for as long into the program as I would like and think I should. I have a friend in a non profit who is worried about whether his CPA and lawyer will convince the governmemt that his organization is a federation of chapters each with less than 500 people and therefore eligible for payroll protection. If they are classed as a single monolithic organization then they will get nothing under the program he hopes will keep them afloat while they figure out what to do. Another friend is worried about whether he can qualify for his loan to be used for the most pressing needs his business has if does get a special SBA disaster loan. We all have anxieties about the wording and function of programs meant ot help in these tough times.

The media has done a pretty good job of showing how Americans are facing this crisis.  This morning CBS This Morning  featured someone doing good whom I had featured on my Facebook Profile earlier. You should be able to read that article from a local paper associated with Gannet  a major US newspaper publisher right here by clicking on the highlighted word. The CBS link showing Christine  and a few others doing their part should appear here. The story is the more meaningful because Christine Savoie is linked to the Acadian Museum to which I have been connected for quite some time.

But these activities and donations have involved very little of my time. Mostly, I have been involved in my own affairs. It has not been a time when I have been particularly distinguished by altruism.  There has been a good bit of anxiety, some depression and some physical pain. I seem quite able to fill most of my thoughts with my own needs and problems,

So the truth is that a lot of my mental energy is focused on myself. I am pretty involved in dealing with my own concerns. This blog has always been a kind of hybrid for documenting my own concerns and also discussing the various larger events that have caught my attention. Many of those unusual events have been crises of one kind or another. But this is a crisis of a different type.

The  truth is that we each came to this crisis with a set of problems and worries that already commanded our time and attention. I have projects I have invested enormous effort in that simply refuse to prosper and still are not prospering, I am lonely, I have missed windows of protocols and bureaucratic regulation on areas that affect my life and where I honestly do not think I could have done better. I am tired and lonely. But, as I try to deal with all the little stuff I try to be grateful for how little I have been hurt by the big crisis so far.