 Gloria Gaynor's 1979 hit "I Will Survive" has become one of the anthems of our times. Do you have a pandemic playlist? Me neither. But then, I’m the least musical person on the planet. At the other end of the spectrum, the folks giving out vaccines at San Francisco’s vast Moscone Center decided to energize the staff and patients by playing songs that have now become famous around here for reducing people to tears of joy. “Getting vaxxed at moscone and they’re literally playing Here Comes the Sun on the PA and I’m shaking,” SF Chronicle restaurant critic Soleil Ho tweeted on March 17. “I’m gonna f—ing cry.” The Moscone vaccinators soon learned that what people want to hear as they get the lifesaving jab is often the kind of cheerful, sentimental oldies they used to scoff at when their parents danced to them at weddings: “Walking on Sunshine,” “I Will Survive,” “O-o-h Child (Things Are Gonna Get Easier)." Now San Franciscans are going around comparing notes about what was on the loudspeaker when they got theirs and growing misty-eyed when “their song” comes on the radio. As for me, I was in a suburban Rite Aid (the pharmacy originally known as Thrif D Discount Center) and I can’t quite recall whether the loudspeaker was saying, “Cleanup on aisle five,” or “Attention shoppers: we’re having a special today on hemorrhoid cream.” Obviously I’ll never again hear either phrase without welling up.  Will a Yoda t-shirt help you feel the Force of your vaccine? Photo via Etsy.com If you’re not yet vaxxed and would rather ensure there’s a more fitting soundtrack to your big moment, bring along the Moscone playlist (also available on Spotify). 1. “Here Comes the Sun,” The Beatles 2. “Happy,” Pharrell Williams 3. “Lovely Day,” Bill Withers 4. “Higher Love,” Steve Winwood 5. “Lean on Me,” Sandro Cavazzo 6. “Best Day of My Life,” American Authors 7. “ABC,” Jackson 5 8. “Walking on Sunshine,” Katrina and the Waves 9. “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” Justin Timberlake 10. “I Will Survive,” Gloria Gaynor 11. “Don’t Worry Be Happy,” Bobby McFerrin 12. “Sidewalk Talk,” Madonna and Jellybean 13. “Sleepyhead,” Passion Pit 14. “Alright,” Supergrass 15. “State of Grace,” Taylor Swift 16. “Jump in the Line,” Harry Belafonte 17. “Sir Duke,” Stevie Wonder 18. “O-o-h Child,” The Five Stairsteps With or without the right soundtrack, there are moments from this year that are forever fixed in our minds. The first time we went out to the market dressed for the apocalypse. Buying our first mask. Learning Zoom. Realizing with horror that we’d touched our face without washing our hands. Finding out someone we know was hospitalized with Covid-19. Figuring out how to put the happy back into the holidays, in spite of everything. And throughout it all, spending a ridiculous amount of time watching Netflix and ordering on Amazon. Like most people, I try to use Amazon responsibly, only buying things I can’t get locally and clicking the button that says my items will be combined and delivered in fewer packages (yet often, inexplicably, aren’t). But it’s pretty clear that for some, the online retail giant is all about entertainment and indulging in some seriously questionable fantasies, as journalists Shanon Maglente and Katie Bourque reported in “40 Weirdest Products on Amazon That People Actually Love.” How did I not know about these when I was making out my holiday gift list? Which of my friends and relatives couldn’t use a nice chicken leash, some pickle-flavored lip balm, or a potato with their very own photo on it? Now that I’m vaccinated, I’m making a serious effort to cut down on my online shopping in hopes of reducing my wrap rage and packaging guilt. Wrap rage is the the fury and frustration we feel during our efforts to extract a simple object — a lightbulb, a computer cord, a set of measuring spoons — from a plastic clamshell clearly designed to protect the contents from a fall off a 20-story building during a nuclear blast. Every year 6000 Americans wind up in emergency rooms with cuts, abrasions, and wrist injuries incurred while attempting to penetrate protective casing. Of course, excessive plastic packaging is even more damaging to the environment, polluting our land and water, eventually finding its way into the food chain and our stomachs. On top of all that, it’s just plain silly, as writer Phil Forbes demonstrates in “13 Bad Packaging Examples That’ll Make You Cry for the Environment.” We can’t blame the pandemic for superfluous packaging, which has existed ever since the days when you ordered via rotary phone and waited weeks for stuff to arrive by mail. And while I try to be responsible, I do believe there are times when a little retail therapy is as essential to our psychological survival as music, chocolate, or wine. And now my shortlist of necessary indulgences has a surprising new addition: poetry. This week, for the first time in more than a year, Rich and I had another couple over for dinner, and upon arrival Tobey Hiller, a distinguished poet herself, gave me a copy of Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins. I confess I’d never heard of Billy Collins, who turns out to be a Poet Laureate of America and, according to the NY Times, “the most popular poet in America.” I opened the slim volume and it was love at first stanza. As Daily Beast puts it, “Whereas some poetry ignores its reader and seals itself in a shell of its own construction, Collins engages with his audience. One of the ways he welcomes the reader with open arms is through humor. He’s pretty much always funny; it is part of his aesthetic, his poetic DNA.” “There’s something very authentic about humor, when you think about it,” Collins once said. “Anybody can pretend to be serious. But you can’t pretend to be funny.”  America's favorite poet, Billy Collins, is a genuinely funny guy. Photo via Daily Beast Here’s the first Billy Collins poem I read. Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House The neighbors' dog will not stop barking. He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark that he barks every time they leave the house. They must switch him on on their way out. The neighbors' dog will not stop barking. I close all the windows in the house and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast but I can still hear him muffled under the music, barking, barking, barking, and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra, his head raised confidently as if Beethoven had included a part for barking dog. When the record finally ends he is still barking, sitting there in the oboe section barking, his eyes fixed on the conductor who is entreating him with his baton while the other musicians listen in respectful silence to the famous barking dog solo, that endless coda that first established Beethoven as an innovative genius. That’s an image I’ll treasure forever. And I can only hope that somewhere in the Moscone Center vaccination playlist there is room for that Beethoven symphony with the famous barking dog solo, and that an entire generation of vaccinated San Franciscans will get teary-eyed every time the neighbor’s dog begins to make a ruckus.  What songs have gotten you through the pandemic? What other indulgences have kept you going? Let me know in the comments section below. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY Click here to STAY CONNECTED!
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 “You won’t believe what we did last night,” a friend told me Sunday. “We went out to a movie! Every other row was blocked off, and there was hardly anybody in the theater. A few rows in front of us there was a woman with a collie dog. The movie was a classic comedy, and I swear during the funny scenes I saw that dog chuckling right along with the woman, and at the big moments he howled with laughter. After the show, I went up to the woman and said, “I just have to tell you that your dog is amazing. He really seemed to love the film.” And she replied, “Yes, it is amazing, because he hated the book.” OK, some parts of that story aren’t strictly true, and I’ll leave it to you to figure out which ones. (Yes, you guessed it. The dog never even read the book. Although he did skim a couple of online movie reviews before he went.)  A dog-sitter took this photo of our late beloved dog, Eskimo Pie, catching up on her reading. Now, I haven’t been to a movie theater in … wait, what year is this? But I can easily imagine the dizzying effect of the experience, looking around the familiar place and being bombarded with conflicting messages: Hey, this is fun! It’s a disease vector! Run for your life! Let’s get popcorn! That got me thinking about the way perception shapes our reality. We say “seeing is believing” and devote a huge amount of our brain capacity — 30% of its size, two thirds of its processing function — to the visual cortex. But can our eyes be trusted? Not so much. “Sight is an illusion,” says author Isaac Lidsky, who learned this the hard way when he went blind at 25. “Numerous studies demonstrate this. If you are asked to estimate the walking speed of a man in a video, for example, your answer will be different if you're told to think about cheetahs or turtles. A hill appears steeper if you've just exercised, and a landmark appears farther away if you're wearing a heavy backpack. We have arrived at a fundamental contradiction. What you see is a complex mental construction of your own making, but you experience it passively as a direct representation of the world around you.” Our emotions, Lidsky says, are no more reliable. In particular, fear makes us interpret input that’s ambiguous or uncertain (a rustling in the bushes, say) as a clear and present danger (a sabre-tooth tiger!) when in fact it may be harmless (a light breeze). “Your fears distort your reality,” he observes. “Psychologists have a great term for it: awfulizing.” Over the past year, awfulizing became the norm — and to be honest, it’s proven to be a very useful survival tool. Was there ever a better time than 2020 to assume the worst? Look at New Zealand; the moment they heard about the coronavirus, they reacted as if it were a sabre-tooth-level threat, and in the entire country of five million people only 26 were lost to Covid-19. Most countries, including mine, weren’t so wise or fortunate. Now, we’re pinning our hopes on the vaccines creating a future in which the Earth is no longer ruled by the virus. If/when that happens, we’ll have to stop viewing awfulizing as the default setting and overhaul our perceptions of what constitutes sensible living. In the meantime, we need to figure out how to ease into unfamiliar social territory and update our rusty social skills.  In the Saturday Night Live skit Post-Covid Dating, twenty-somethings in a bar awkwardly attempt to connect. After a series of gaffes and misunderstandings, he asks, “Would you care to dance?” “I thought you’d never ask,” she says, leaping up to gyrate on her own, the way to do when you’re home by yourself and your favorite song comes on. “No, I meant with me!” he says.  Kate McKinnon and Nick Jonas demonstrate just how rusty our social skills have become in the SNL skit "Post-Covid Dating." There are going to be moments like that for all of us. Vaccinated friends, who are starting to invite people over for the first time, report disconcerting results. “I’m so used to Zoom that after forty minutes, I was ready to wrap things up. They stayed on another three hours!” And let’s face it, there are a few features of this era it’ll be hard to give up. “I sleep in pajamas,” tweeted @HenpeckedHal, “just because it’s nice to wake up already dressed for work.” As @danadonly noted, “2020 was a kinda bad year for me but a really good year for my dog who did not have to be alone for a single second.”  Everyone has had to make adjustments. Early in the pandemic, Miles, a mixed-breed rescue dog, took an instant dislike to masks, barking wildly whenever he saw one. (As we all know, he is not alone in this. Possibly he was watching too much Fox News.) “I think it was hard to not be able to observe facial expressions, for him, on people that we came across,” his human, Alex Savas, told the Washington Post. “It was like, ‘What is this new creature I’m looking at here?’” Savas invited pals to come over wearing masks, acting friendly, and bearing slices of turkey for Miles. “He was very physically anxious,” Savas recalls, “making his anxious, whiny noises, very skeptical about going up close to get the treat.” Eventually desire won. “Cold cuts will take you a long way in any situation.” Today, Miles navigates a fully masked world with serenity, keeping an eye out for any bits of turkey that might come his way. Right now, an entire generation of pandemic puppies is about to have their lives turned upside down. No more 24/7 companionship! Two walks a day instead of eight! Hours without treats! How’s a puppy supposed to get through the day? Tearing open your couch and eating all your shoes will help pass the time, but what to do after that? Veterinarians have plenty of practical advice including establishing routines, crate training, food puzzles, smooth jazz, NPR, and white noise machines. You might find it easier — and more cost-effective — to persuade your boss to let you work from home. Not possible? You can always try workshops such as Communicate with your Animal Telepathically or Animal Energy Healing. Do some attention-starved pets simply need the psychological pick-me-up of a makeover? A flamboyant hairdo (known in the trade as “creative grooming”) guarantees everyone will make a tremendous fuss over your dog. The groomers all swear the dyes are perfectly safe and the animals love being fawned over. Personally, I suspect the dogs are just biding their time until they can find a nice big mud puddle to jump into. Figuring out how to navigate a changing landscape is difficult at the best of times (which these are not). “I consider social skills a bit like learning a language,” said essayist and autistic savant Daniel Tammet. “I’ve been practicing it for so long over so many years I’ve almost lost my accent.” This new phase of the pandemic will require all of us, including our dogs, to relearn the language of social interaction, let go of our habit of awfulizing, and embrace whatever comes next. Good luck! Let me know how it goes for you (and your pets). Click here to STAY CONNECTED! Send me your email address and I'll drop you a note whenever I publish new stuff. Feel free to share this article with family and friends. https://www.enjoylivingabroad.com/my-blog/just-how-rusty-are-our-social-skills  This is not an actual photo of what my sister's kids could do to a room when they were little, but it kind of captures the spirit. Photo by Cultura RM Exclusive/Henglein and Steets / Getty Images “I read somewhere that your house is a reflection of your soul,” my sister Kate once told me when her sons were little. She looked around at the chaos, rolled her eyes, then laughed. “God, I hope that’s not true.” I could see what she meant; it’s natural to believe our inner lives should be orderly and tranquil, with less clutter and fewer scars. But I thought there was a lot to be said for a spiritual path crowded with books and toys and casually scattered jackets, ringing with the laughter of young boys chasing each other up the stairs. There seemed to me to be plenty of zen in the midst of all that zing. Whether we view them as our souls made visible or simply an expression of our tastes and times, our homes have plenty to say about us. Right now I’m trying to make sure mine isn’t shouting, “A couple of crazies spent too much time here in isolation!” My second inoculation takes complete effect this week, changing the number of people I can safely socialize with from one (Rich) to 52 million fully vaccinated Americans and hundreds of millions worldwide. My head is spinning at the thought that soon family and friends will be arriving to celebrate this first step towards a post-pandemic life. Is my house ready? Am I?  An important message for our times Some changes are already in the works, like removing the jigsaw puzzle from the dining room table. But what about our decontamination zone? Should all our masks and hand sanitizers be discreetly whisked out of sight — or offered to guests? Do I leave the “Don’t Panic!” towel draped over the railing at the top of the stairs? Rich and I find it amusing, and frankly, a bracing reminder on darker days, but will it strike our pals as peculiar? And what about the TV area, where we’ve dragged our chairs into positions that are no longer symmetrical but offer better angles for viewing the screen? Should we shove everything back into apple pie order? Or do we let people see how we really live? And then there are the DIY projects. Do we bore our visitors with a tour? I’m aware that A) gutters are just gutters, even if Rich did put them up himself, and B) after the first glass of wine, we probably don’t want guests climbing a ladder to inspect the solar panels he installed on the shed roof to power our Bad Boy generator. Will guests feel the Apocalypse Chow Food Locker signals runaway paranoia? Do we even show them our succulent garden, which to be honest, looks like a collection of alien life forms just waiting until we fall asleep to take over our bodies and finish conquering the planet? Clearly the road from solitude to socializing is going to have its bumps and potholes. Whether you're facing this transition now or later in the year, and no matter how long you wished and waited for it, somehow it's still shocking. It makes you realize just how much the pandemic changed our relationship to the place we call "home" and our comfort level with fellow humans. “We’re all like feral weirdos now,” comments Kate Wagner, the New Republic’s architecture critic, who says of the past year, “It reminds me of when I was in high school. I didn’t have anything in common with my peers. I would go to school, not talk to anyone and come home and read or write terrible science fiction. I lived a totally interior life. Now I’ve reverted. It’s been so productive. What if this is just better for me, to live a life of isolation?”  Kate Wagner is the architecture critic for The New Republic and creator of the McMansion Hell blog, which chronicles housing excesses. Photo courtesy of Kate Wagner “In our home, we have a ritual of expressing gratitude every day, in prayer or other ways, to little things,” says sociologist Matthew Desmond, who before the pandemic lived in a mobile home park to chronicle the violence of eviction — a subject that became acutely relevant when the pandemic put 40 million people at risk of losing their homes. “We have windows that keep the cold out. Everyone has their own bed. Our kids have separate rooms. Light. When the plumbing stops working, we can get it fixed. Our mail comes; there is hot water. When I lived in the mobile home park, I met families that didn’t have heat. They would crouch around a space heater and cover themselves with a blanket to get warm. Families are really at risk. So many of us are so tired of looking at the same walls, but there is a chunk of Americans that’s just praying they get to hang onto those walls.” Which brings up an interesting question of how much of our contentment is dependent upon the comparisons we make — between ourselves and others, and between current reality and our romanticized images of the past and future. Economist Nat Ware proposed a thought experiment about this in his TED Talk Why We’re Unhappy — the Expectation Gap. “Imagine that you’re competing in the Olympic Games.… Would you prefer to come second [or] third?” Naturally most of the audience chose second place. He then showed photos of disgruntled silver medalists and radiant winners brandishing the bronze. “It’s expectations that explain why a bronze medalist can be happier than a silver medalist. Because the silver medalist imagines coming first, the bronze medalist imagines coming fourth… At a very basic simple level, we’re unhappy when our expectations of reality exceed our experiences of reality.” The inevitable comparisons we make between the way we live now and what we once expected of 2020/2021 are as frustrating as measuring ourselves against the gold medalists. Whenever I’m tempted to go down that road, I remember visiting this basement hideout where some hardy souls rode out long stretches of the siege of Sarajevo (April 1992 to February 1996) with only that little stove for heat and no Internet or TV.  I'll bet your home is looking a little better right now, isn't it? I know mine is. Like every other aspect of the pandemic, being isolated in our homes has tested our stamina and ingenuity. One upside of restricted socializing has been the freedom to reconfigure our spaces without worrying what others might think. It seems lots of us are pulling stuff out of our storage cupboards, digging out paint cans, and finding ways to make our spaces more colorful, more cozy — more us. I certainly can’t claim to have done anything close to those spectacular DIY projects. (Did I mention Rich installed new gutters?) But their creativity is heartening, and possibly a reflection of our times. As Orson Wells’ character said in The Third Man, “In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace — and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” We don’t get to choose the era we live in, but we do decide what to make of it. Living in chaotic times has upended everything, including our dwellings and who we invite into them. But if Kate’s quote is true, it may have also brought depth and breadth and vigor to our souls. And isn’t nurturing our souls what life is all about?  Here's Rich's secret for getting through pandemic rough spots. How's your home weathering the pandemic? Have you done any DIY projects or made any other changes to it? Let me know in the comments below. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY Click here to STAY CONNECTED! Send me your email address and I'll drop you a note whenever I publish new stuff. Feel free to share this article with family and friends. https://www.enjoylivingabroad.com/my-blog/ready-to-leap-from-solitude-to-socializing  In the memory course, Rich learned to attach numerical significance to symbolic objects, such as these two beauties he met in Chania, Crete, in 2019. “So he says, ‘Try to remember these twenty words, in order, with their numbers.” Rich was describing Jim Kwik’s online course Improve Your Memory Now from the Omega Institute. “He said he could teach us to recall them so well that if he said ‘eleven’ we’d immediately respond ‘skis.’” “How’d you do?” I asked. “At that point, I could barely remember three.” “And now?” “One, the sun. Two, socks. Three, traffic light. Four, searchlight. Five, star. Six, soda. Seven, rainbow. Eight, octopus. Nine, cat. Ten, toes. Eleven, skis…” He rattled off all twenty, but I lost the thread because I was completely gobsmacked. This was last Sunday, weeks after he’d finished the course. How did he do that? “What we think of as memory loss is really mostly distraction,” he said. “We spend 45% of our time mind-wandering: thinking about the past or imagining the future. In those moments we aren’t really paying attention to others or to the mental notes we’re making about picking up milk at the market. It’s even worse when we are multi-tasking — something Kwik says is a myth. We’re not actually doing many things simultaneously, we’re shifting rapidly back and forth, doing one thing after another in short bursts, undermining the quality of our work and accelerating the distraction.”  The fact the real culprit is distraction was excellent news. Why? Because we can do something about it. “Kwik says your memory is actually better than you think it is,” Rich told me. “We get into trouble because we keep trying to recall words when our minds are designed to capture images. He showed us how to attach symbols to things we want to remember: One, the sun; there’s only one. Two, socks come in pairs. Three, the traffic light, which has three colors. Four, the searchlight, found on cop cars with four wheels. Five, a star. Six, soda in a six-pack. And so on. You carry those numbers in your mind and use them to construct images that are much easier to recall than words.” Keep forgetting your friend’s address is 25 Eighty-eighth Street? Think of a pair of socks draped over a star followed by a pair of octopuses. “You can create your own images,” Rich said. “Say you’re food shopping and need two avocados, a basket of blueberries, and some salmon. Kwik suggested visualizing yourself with two avocados on top of your head, blueberries coming out of your nose, and a salmon wrapped around your throat.” My mind’s eye instantly saw Rich standing in the middle of the produce aisle, a whole salmon draped jauntily around his shoulders, balancing avocados on his head. Would he, I wondered, have time to shove blueberries up his nose before store security showed up to escort us off the property?  Incredibly, Rich refused go down to our local supermarket and let me photograph him wearing any of these food items to illustrate the concept I'm discussing here. “Want to hear how I remember pretzels?” Rich asked. “Nope.” How powerful is symbolic recollection? In the Netflix documentary The Mind, Explained, I watched Yanjaa Wintersoul memorize 500 three-digit numbers in ten minutes. How? She converted the digits to sounds then images using her own personal code. “So 5 is an S, 3 is an A, and 9 is a G, just because of the shapes. So basically it’s like reading something instead of looking at all these numbers.” The next number, 166, converts to TBB. Wintersoul then turned SAG TBB into a vivid, offbeat image: “This saggy, half-naked person is covered in, like, tabouli.” Her imagination placed 500 such images in order throughout a familiar location — what some call a memory palace — and then she mentally strolled from room to room identifying the numbers.  Yanjaa Wintersoul is an international grand master of memory. (Wondering about the name? She's Mongolian-Swedish.) For those of us who can barely remember if we're out of avocados, Wintersoul's feat is dazzling. But the real challenge comes in trying to recall life events. The process is piecemeal and slippery at best, sometimes leading to false memories, unreliable eyewitness accounts, and stories that conflate separate memories into one seamless tale. The Netflix documentary asks: Why would Mother Nature give us such faulty recording equipment? It turns out the survival value of recollection doesn’t lie in accurately preserving the past but in storing images that help us envision the future and take appropriate action. I grew up watching my mother race around the house looking for her car keys and glasses muttering, “I’m losing my mind. I’m losing what’s left of my mind.” Vivid images of her frustration, and my own during similar frenzied hunts, motivate me to keep my keys, glasses, phone in assigned places. Sometimes our unconscious mind merges separate memories to make a point. As a kid, Melanie Mignucci vividly recalled 9/11. “I remember my mom was working in the city. I remember smoke billowing out over the water of the Long Island Sound behind the building where I went to elementary school.” There are just a few, tiny holes in her story: her mother was working in Connecticut at the time, her classroom windows didn’t face the water, and smoke from the World Trade Center was 40 miles way and drifting in the opposite direction. According to neuroscientists, Mignucci blended memories with screen images to create a narrative that was less technically accurate but better expressed the day’s staggering personal impact.  As a seven-year-old, Melanie Mignucci conflated her memories of 9/11 with what she'd seen on TV. Today, as a health editor at Bustle, she has a more nuanced understanding of how memory works. That got me thinking about our memories of 2020. I know, most of us would pay good money to acquire a case of total amnesia around the whole grisly year. But someday we may need to draw upon those experiences to cope with other disasters that knock us sideways. Among its many other lessons, 2020 taught us about the fragility of memory itself. Throughout the pandemic we've all commiserated with each other over brain fog and memory lapses, which are a common result of long periods of isolation and loss of the structure that once defined our days. Beyond that, we’ve all been living under the knowledge that a killer virus is rampaging across the planet, possibly heading directly towards us; distractions don’t come much bigger than that. It’s a wonder any of us can remember our own names, let alone whether we need those blueberries Rich has up his nose. The good news is we can retrain our brains to retain the memories we care about. Yes, no matter how old we are. “It was once believed that as we age, the brain's networks became fixed,” explains Neuroplasticity: Rewire Your Brain for Learning, Memory, and Mood. “But now, an enormous amount of research has revealed the brain never stops changing and adjusting. Connections within the brain are constantly becoming stronger or weaker, depending on what is being used.”  I saw a meme today that said, “Not only is my short-term memory horrible, but so is my short-term memory.” If you’re having days like that, maybe it’s time to start visualizing a better future. Creating mental images of yourself wrapping fish around your neck and slathering a flabby friend’s half-naked body with tabouli may be just what you need to re-energize your brain, live more fully in the present moment, and create memories that will last forever. This post is part of my ongoing series of articles on surviving the pandemic and, with luck, emerging from it with some remnants of our sanity and good humor intact. Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE HERE if you'd like more of my free stories in your inbox each week. Feel free to share this post link with family and friends. www.enjoylivingabroad.com/my-blog/richs-memory-course-and-wait-what-was-i-saying YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY "Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window." — Peter Drucker  Lately I’ve been having disturbing dreams about doing dangerous, forbidden things like shaking someone’s hand or entering rooms crowded with people whose identity and vaccination history are unknown to me. Weird, right? Why am I tossing and turning about this stuff when other people are happily spending their nights dreaming about diving into pools of chocolate while winning the lottery and having sex with movie stars? Apparently, my subconscious is feeling a bit jittery about the prospect of rejoining the human race (or at least the vaccinated portions of it) after a year of socializing almost exclusively with Rich. I’m getting my second injection on St. Patrick’s Day (rumor has it they’re dying the vaccine green for the occasion), and I’ll be cleared to interact with other vaccinated folks starting on April Fool’s Day (and yes, I’m really hoping there won’t be any practical jokes revolving around that!). I’m profoundly grateful for my good fortune; friends in other countries don’t expect inoculations until September, maybe Christmas. This week brought disheartening news of Italy’s resurgence and return to lockdown and Europe’s suspension of AstraZeneca inoculations. Despite such setbacks, it’s likely everyone reading this will have the opportunity to get vaccinated this year, and life will be upended yet again. Living in such flux sometimes makes me wish I could consult a crystal ball and get a few hints about the future. Then again, maybe not — as Canadian comedian Julie Nolke demonstrates in this engaging skit about her future self going back in time to give her pre-pandemic self a heads-up about what’s coming. If your future self could pay you a visit right now, what do you think you’d learn about the next phase of the Covid crisis? For clues, I consulted the article After coronavirus: Australia offers a strange glimpse of life post-pandemic. “I'm writing from Sydney in the state of New South Wales at 7 p.m. Friday, March 12, 2021," reports Jackson Ryan. "For the past 54 days, New South Wales — Australia's most populous state, with 8 million residents — has recorded zero new cases of coronavirus. Zero.” Constant daily reports of 0, 0, 0 cases caused the folks Down Under to nickname them “donut days.” With a population of 25 million, Australia has had fewer than 30,000 Covid cases (about half the US daily average) and a total of 909 deaths (our toll is 531,766). How did they do it? “Superb management by our state-based health services in containing and tracing outbreaks, plus a stringent quarantine policy for those returning from overseas.” However, Ryan notes, “The crisis isn't over, and we haven't even agreed on what ‘The End’ really means scientifically or socially. But in Australia, the end feels as close as it ever has. In this pseudo-future place, we've found some semblance of normalcy.” He then describes an evening spent in a packed movie theater. Aaughhh! He's living my nightmares!  When Jackson Ryan recently entered a crowded Australian movie theater, he found the scene surreal and disconcerting. “The normality of it all weirds me out,” he says. I feel your angst, Ryan! I get twitchy just watching crowd scenes on Netflix. For a year, pundits have been discussing “the return to normal.” But is that possible? Or desirable? We tend to view our pre-pandemic lives through a rosy glow of nostalgia, as if it consisted of nothing but Instagram-worthy good hair days with congenial companions in glamorous locales serving phenomenal food with lavish amounts of wine. “I firmly believe most nostalgia for the glorious past is delusional thinking,” says A. J. Jacobs in Thanks a Thousand. “I used to write a magazine column in which, each month, I would research just how horrible past centuries were — disease-ridden, dangerous, cruel, racist, sexist, smelly, superstitious, and poisonous... We have huge challenges now, no doubt, but the solution doesn’t lie in a return to yesteryear. Sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly annoyed about something — the rattle of the air conditioner, say — I’ll repeat a three-word phrase: ‘Surgery without anesthesia.’ It’s a helpful little mantra.” OK, we'd gotten past anesthesia-free surgery by 2019, but let's not forget that the pre-Covid-19 era was “disease-ridden, dangerous, cruel, racist, sexist, smelly, superstitious, and poisonous.” Just think about HIV, opioids, babies in cages, the spike in hate crime murders, Harvey Weinstein, gas station rest rooms, QAnon, and the chemicals in junk food. When “all this is over,” all that will still be with us. Except for Harvey Weinstein, whose earliest possible release date from prison is November 9, 2039.  March 11, 2020 In my rosier moments, I believe we’ve learned a lot in the past year and will hold onto the most vital skill we honed during the pandemic: adaptability. As we face new challenges, will we study and adopt smart ideas that proved useful in other countries? Next time around, could innovative approaches prevent half a million American deaths? Of course, what works in one culture may be a hard sell in others. For instance, in The Finnish Way, the author describes moving from Canada to Helsinki, where she cured her depression and revitalized her life by adopting the Finnish custom of taking a daily morning dip in the Baltic Sea — yes, even in winter. “I climb down the metal ladder leading to a large hole of about three by three meters cut into the thick ice,” writes Katja Pantzar. “When I lower myself into the water, the cold shock — about 1 degree Celsius (34 degrees Fahrenheit) — hits me. During the first few strokes it feels as if hundreds of pins and needles are pricking my body. The pricks are soon replaced by euphoria: ‘I’m alive!’” She goes on to describe the many medical benefits of her daily dip, but while I caught a few words like endorphins, dopamine, and oxytocin, mostly my mind was reeling from the thought that anyone would voluntarily submit their body to such torture. Yet apparently ice swimming is popular in Finland, the happiest country on Earth. Somehow I doubt ice swimming will catch on here in California, where we weather wimps won’t dip a toe in the Pacific when the air temperature falls below 70. Of course, if we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, it’s that we really don’t know what we’re capable of until we’re tested by events — the kind that were unimaginable five minutes ago and now define the shape of our world. “Our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant, and to face the challenge of change,” Martin Luther King, Jr. told an earlier generation, and his words ring true today. I cling to the knowledge that not all change is for the worse. Chances are we'll somehow distribute vaccines worldwide. The US may one day achieve donut days with zero Covid cases. I might even stop having nightmares about crowded indoor spaces. Could happen! There’s only one certain prediction that my past, present, and future self would absolutely agree on: I am not taking up ice swimming under any circumstances whatsoever. This post is part of my ongoing series of articles on surviving the pandemic and, with luck, emerging from it with some remnants of our sanity and good humor intact. I'd be happy to send you a quick note when I publish new stuff. SUBSCRIBE HERE to get free stories in your inbox each week. Feel free to share this post link with family and friends. https://www.enjoylivingabroad.com/my-blog/its-tricky-making-predictions-especially-about-the-future YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY  The closest I've come lately to packing a suitcase was painting "Armchair Travel." “We are getting crazy travel bug,” my friend Lonnie wrote me this week. “Don’t know when but we are talking. Would love to pick your brain.” My emails and Zoom calls are humming with fresh possibilities now that the vaccines are making many Americans feel, as my pal Pete puts it, “completely bullet proof.” Or at least sufficiently Covid-proof to consider a future that includes a destination further away than the local supermarket. For the last year Rich and I have avoided even discussing travel. Bringing it up seemed as foolish as someone in a WWII foxhole saying, “When all this is over, I’m going to buy a farm.” Way to jinx yourself! But a few weeks ago, when I’d had my first shot and Rich his second, an idea popped into my head. “When it is safe to travel again,” I said, “what would you think about visiting the happiest places on earth?” “Disneyland?” “No, seriously. I’ve spent the last year writing about surviving disasters, packing for catastrophes, and stocking the Apocalypse Chow Food Locker. You’ve spent months studying the science of happiness. Wouldn’t it be fun to visit lighthearted places — you know, the countries that always top the World Happiness Index? See what they’re like?” Rich got that I-think-we’re-on-to-something gleam in his eye and said, “Where’s the map of Europe?” In moments we had the map spread across the table and the World Happiness Index rankings onscreen.  This map, the most recent I can find, shows the 2019 rankings, which are very similar to the 2020 data released last March. The World’s Happiest Countries
“Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, and the Netherlands,” Rich read. “So a summer trip then.” “Definitely.” I recalled our visit to Helsinki in July of 2016; in every photo I’m wearing at least two layers plus a jacket. And, come to think of it, smiling. They say it was the King of Bhutan and his famous slogan, "Our gross national product is happiness," that inspired the UN to start publishing the World Happiness Index in 2012. The rankings alerted the world to the peculiar fact that the Scandinavian lands — despite being as cold, bleak, and remote as Winterfell in Game of Thrones, known for high suicides and taxes — consistently took the prize for wellbeing and contentment. “Clearly, when it comes to the level of average life evaluations, the Nordic states are doing something right,” states the latest report, released in March of 2020. “But Nordic exceptionalism isn’t confined to citizen’s happiness. No matter whether we look at the state of democracy and political rights, lack of corruption, trust between citizens, felt safety, social cohesion, gender equality, equal distribution of incomes, Human Development Index, or many other global comparisons, one tends to find the Nordic countries in the global top spots.” So their happiness ranking reflects a society based on fairness, stability, and trust. What must that be like?  “80% of Danish citizens trust each other,” says Malene Rydahl, author of Happy as a Danes. “In most countries it’s around 5% in the worst cases, and the average in Euope is 25%. In Denmark, it gets summed up in one image: babies sleeping outside a restaurant. Now, you would say, ‘Nobody’s watching the babies.’ Well, I would say, ‘Everyone is.’” The video Why Finland and Denmark Are Happier Than The U.S. explains some reasons why those two countries trade off the top spot on the Happiness Index every year. Their citizens enjoy free education and health care, gender and income equality, and work-life balance that’s taken so seriously everyone has reasonable schedules, five-week paid vacations, and the right to “stress leave” if the job becomes overwhelming. So why all the suicides? “The higher the level of life satisfaction, actually also the slightly higher the level of suicide rates,” says Meik Wiking, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute, a quality-of-life think tank in Copenhagen. “And the theory here is that it might be more difficult to be unhappy in an otherwise happy society. Because it creates a stronger contrast to how you are feeling if you are surrounded by very happy people.” Since 1980 those rates have plummeted by about 75% and are now similar to those throughout Europe and the US. “But still it’s not zero. So we still need to reduce that even further.” Wiking is doing his bit to spread Nordic happiness, not only in his own country, but around the world via The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living. Hygge, pronounced roughly like HUE-guh, comes from the Norwegian word for wellbeing and defines that delightful cocoon of tranquil contentment that comes from being comfy, cozy and safe, usually in the company of congenial companions. “Hygge,” Wiking explains, “has been called everything from ‘the art of creating intimacy,’ ‘coziness of the soul,’ and ‘the absence of annoyance,’ to ‘taking pleasure from the presence of soothing things,’ ‘cozy togetherness,’ and my personal favorite, ‘cocoa by candlelight.’” As you can imagine, I am in love with this concept. In these challenging times, clearly we need all the hygge we can get. In fact, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for us all to become hyggespreders, people who spread hygge around our homes and communities. Hygge is associated with soft lighting, relaxed clothes, cozy furniture, and familiar, sweet, comforting foods. Ideally it involves lots of candles, the crackle of logs in a hearth, and the smell of chocolate chip cookies baking. Obviously, that’s a shoot for; I have no log-burning fireplace, can’t bake chocolate chip cookies every night, and rarely light candles as I usually have to get out of bed at least once to reassure myself I remembered to blow them all out. But I have spent a fair amount of time making our cottage cozy. Right now Rich and I are still hunkering down in the comfy safety of our California cottage. I don’t know when it will make sense to hit the road again, but in preparation for that joyous day, we’re busy researching our Happiness Tour. There are a few tiny obstacles. The pandemic is far from over, especially in Europe. Our Spanish residency cards have expired, so we can’t return to Spain until it reopens to American tourists. And to move freely around Europe for months on our Happiness Tour, we will need to renew those residency cards — a daunting task at the best of times, now complicated by massive backlogs due to the pandemic and Brexit. With luck, we’ll eventually get all that sorted and take off on a long railway journey from Spain (28th in happiness ranking) through France (23rd) and ultimately to the Nordic countries. There I hope to experience hygge in its native habitat, learning first-hand what it’s like to nestle in a warm, cozy, firelit place wearing thick socks and a wooly sweater, savoring a steaming cup of cocoa by candlelight, even if it is the middle of July.  YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY This post is part of my ongoing series of articles on surviving the pandemic and, with luck, emerging from it with some remnants of our sanity and good humor intact.
I'd be happy to send you a quick note when I publish new stuff. SUBSCRIBE HERE to get free stories in your inbox each week. Feel free to share this post link with family and friends. https://www.enjoylivingabroad.com/my-blog/is-it-time-to-start-thinking-about-travel-again  I savored every sip of this cup of coffee, my last in a Seville café before Spain went into lockdown a year ago. “In my default mode, I’m mildly to severely aggravated more than 50 percent of my waking hours,” writes A. J. Jacobs in Thanks a Thousand. “That’s a ridiculous way to go through life. I don’t want to get to heaven (if such a thing exists) and spend my time complaining about the volume of the harp music.” This is just one tiny example of the abundance of wisdom that has come my way since I wrote last week about Rich’s happiness course. It turns out friends, relatives, long-time readers, new readers, total strangers, and authors both ancient and modern all have juicy stuff to share on the art of living. My friend Sandra sent me a quote that resonated with a lot of us: “Be content to seem what you really are.” Yes! Kudos to second century stoic philosopher and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius for that one. He also said (as I learned from Googling the guy), “The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing,” and “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” Words to live by!  Many thanks to my long-time reader Faye for reminding me of the wisdom of Harold Kushner. I’ve spent much of the last week following up on quotes and suggested readings, and it’s been, frankly, pretty wonderful. I learned that the Science of Happiness course Rich just completed was inspired by positive psychology, which suggests that instead of constantly focusing on society’s scariest minds (serial killers, psychotics, the Kardashians), maybe we should start studying the strengths that enable individuals and communities to thrive and enjoy themselves. What a concept! “The ultimate source of happiness is simply a healthy body and a warm heart,” said the Dalai Lama in the conversation with Desmond Tutu chronicled in The Book of Joy, recommended by my friend Alice. “If you have an open heart and are filled with trust and friendship,” said Archbishop Tutu, “even if you are physically alone, even living a hermit’s life, you will never feel lonely.” Encouraging words for those of us who have been living in a state of isolation that would have been unthinkable a year ago.  I was lucky enough to see the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala, India in 1995. He's there in the upper left, bowing more deeply than anyone else. My friend Alice and I, along with our husbands, were in the far back in the tiny section reserved for foreigners. Even surrounded by all this wisdom, living rich emotional and spiritual lives isn’t easy. How do we open our hearts? I found some ideas in a book my sister Kate told me about: The Joy Diet, by Oprah’s life coach, sociologist Martha Beck. Disappointingly, this isn’t a primer on eating more chocolate, drinking more red wine, and chomping on more deep-fat fried pasta (yes, it’s a thing). Beck explains, “When the word diet first entered the English language, back in 1656 when I was just a girl, it didn’t refer to food intake. It meant ‘a way of living or thinking.’” And that’s the real challenge. Because, as she points out, “The typical human mind is like a supercomputer possessed by the soul of a demented squirrel.” Boy, can I relate.  “The components of the Joy Diet,” I read, “create a direct connection between your conscious mind and your deep self, the part of you that knows the purpose of your life and how to achieve it.” Well, that sounded promising. Beck strongly, STRONGLY recommended working with each of the ten “menu items” for at least a week before going on to the next. I decided to give it a try and started with the first, deceptively simple one, at six o’clock Thursday morning. I spent 15 minutes doing nothing. OK, that’s not 100% true; I sat in a big comfy chair and sipped coffee. The idea is to create distraction-free time, detached from busyness and devices. While some might turn to meditation or prayer, others find that quiet walks or simple actions, like folding cloth napkins or sipping tea, bring stillness to the soul. “Perpetually doing,” says Beck, “without ever tuning in to the center of our being, is the equivalent of fueling a mighty ship by tossing all its navigational equipment into the furnace.” The results? I haven’t achieved nirvana, but my days feel a little more spacious, and I appreciate my coffee in new ways. Which is why I was overjoyed to discover my next hot read: Thanks a Thousand: A Gratitude Journey, in which author A. J. Jacobs set out to thank every single person involved in producing his morning coffee, from his local barista to Colombian growers.  Here's Jacobs expressing his gratitude to a member of the staff of La Marzocco, which makes espresso machines. Photo by CBS Jacobs discovered coffee is “one of the most mind-boggling accomplishments in human history … it makes the Panama Canal look like a third grader’s craft project.” He thanked a thousand workers, interviewing many, learning why the wrong shaped lid can make your coffee “taste like cat piss,” what makes New York’s water so delicious (low calcium), and how delicate you have to be processing coffee beans (very). He became astonished by the level of interconnectedness and cooperation required. “Almost everything good in the world is the result of teamwork,” he notes. “Consider the polio vaccine…” Or the Covid-19 vaccine, which took approximately every PhD on the planet to develop, and many thousands of others — including chemists, lab techs, truck drivers, refrigerator manufacturers, nurses, and pharmacists — to deliver to my left shoulder. I am grateful to each and every one of you!  THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU ALL!!!!! (Me, after receiving my first Covid-19 vaccine.) Every morning, when I sit down with my coffee and do nothing for 15 minutes, I am awed by the small miracle filling the warm cup I’m cradling in my hands. “Gratitude has a lot to do with holding on to a moment as long as possible,” says Scott Barry Kaufman, scientific director of The Imagination Institute in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s closely related to mindfulness and savoring. Gratitude can shift our perception of time and slow it down. It can make our life’s petty annoyances dissolve away, at least for a moment.” In a couple of days, I’ll learn what Beck has in store for me in Step 2 of the Joy Diet. I’ve heeded her warnings and resisted the temptation to skip ahead. If Rich and the other great minds I’ve encountered lately have taught me anything, it’s the importance of slowing down and appreciating what’s in front of me before rushing on to the next thing. Gratitude needs time and space to flourish. Shéa, one of my long-time readers, puts it this way: “Gratitude lists and learning to view 'difficulties' as challenges and learning experiences literally changed my life. I was such an unhappy person and never seemed able to accomplish what I wanted to in life. But then I stopped worrying about being happy and focused on being grateful, learning, experiencing, and growing. I started pursuing my goals instead of happiness itself. And guess what? BOOM! Happiness. I am a genuinely happy person and I am living the most amazing life I never could have dreamed of. Okay, yeah, there's stress now and then, of course. Injustices infuriate me. But I face the world with determination and joy every day, because I freaking LOVE being alive!” And isn't that the whole point? YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY This post is part of my ongoing series of articles on surviving the pandemic, if possible with some remnants of our sanity and good humor intact. Each week I provide tips, strategies, and reasons for hope.
I'd be happy to send you a quick note when I publish new stuff. Sign up HERE to get free stories in your inbox each week. Feel free to share this post link with family and friends. https://www.enjoylivingabroad.com/my-blog/what-i-learned-thanks-to-richs-happiness-course  Rich and I shared this happiness moment with our friend Pete and our flamingos in 2019. “Imagine that scientists have created a happiness machine. A machine that could make you as happy as you like with the push of a button. Would you use it? Would you push the button?” asks Dacher Keltner, director of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. “I’ve asked that question of my students for years, and most of them say no. Most of them want to find true happiness on their own, in a genuine way. But how do you do that?” Great minds have been debating that one for the entire 200,000 years Homo Sapiens has had the power of speech. And today, my husband, Rich, is going to put in his two cents worth on the subject, having just completed the Science of Happiness course presented by Keltner and Emiliana Simon-Thomas, science director of the GGSC. “I consider myself to be a happy person,” Rich told me in an exclusive interview at our kitchen table. “I became interested in the question of why. I wanted to know what it takes to be a happy person. Also, my wife encouraged me to do it.” “She sounds like a very wise woman,” I replied. “What did you learn?”  “Probably the biggest surprise was that 50% of your happiness is inherited, 10% is your life situation, such as your profession and how comfortable you are economically, and 40% is what you do with your life and how you view your life.” “How can you inherit happiness? Is it built into your DNA?” “A surprising amount is physiological,” he said. “For instance, the vagus nerve runs from the brain throughout the body. Some are born with more of it. It’s the thing that responds physically when you see a beautiful sky that takes your breath away.” Simon-Thomas has said that “Physically speaking, our vagus nerve represents our sense of connection and closeness.” Rich added, “There’s a dopamine stimulator in the brain called Oxytocin (not to be confused with the opioid OxyContin). The more it’s stimulated, the more caring people are. Again, some of us are just born with more of it.”  “My joyful moments are spontaneous conversations with strangers about something that makes me feel connected with them,” says Emiliana Simon-Thomas. “I have a bigger trust in humanity. It makes me feel safe in the world.” Obviously there's not much we can do about our DNA, but we can work with the 40% of happiness that is under our control. “Being happy takes a lot of work,” Rich said. For a start, you can't go after it directly. “If you’re seeking happiness all the time, you are going to fail. Life doesn’t work like that. Happiness is really a byproduct. The ancient Greeks called it eudaimonia, human flourishing and blessedness, achieved by a life of virtue and ethical wisdom. Contrary to what it says in the Declaration of Independence, you can’t pursue happiness; you pursue something else and receive happiness.” “Like what?” I asked. “What can you pursue in life that will lead to flourishing, blessedness, and happiness?” “Help others and show gratitude,” he replied promptly. “It’s all about kindness. Kindness leads to compassion. Compassion leads to altruism. Compassion makes you want to do something for others; altruism is actually doing it. All that is totally different from empathy, pity, or sympathy, which don’t call you to action. 'I feel your pain' isn’t action and doesn’t lead to happiness.”  Altruist Chuck Collins, great grandson of meatpacker Oscar Mayer, chose to give away his inheritance at the age of 26. His book Born on Third Base describes his lifelong effort to reduce inequality and contribute to the common good. “How do we start?” I asked. “The Buddhists tell us to stay present to what’s going on. And listen. One of the skills they encourage in this course is listening. Humans go mind-wandering 45% of the time; instead of focusing on the present, the mind is drifting into the past or future.” Paying attention, he said, lets us notice opportunities to help others. “It’s the little things. Like the time you helped that old lady up the steps of the café in Greece. Or the other day, when we passed those two beggars and one said, ‘Spare any chocolate?’ and you had some in your purse so you gave it to them.” I had to laugh, remembering the surprise and delight on the beggars’ faces; they’d been kidding around with the request, and now they were each holding a foil-wrapped square of high-end dark chocolate with sea salt caramel — something I know from personal experience will brighten anyone’s day. The four of us laughed together and parted on a little buzz of joy.  February 22 to 26 is Random Acts of Kindness Week. Dacher Keltner suggests we've survived as a species because cooperation and helpfulness aren't rare or random, but rather are built into our everyday lives. Photo by Getty “I get how helping others makes you happy,” I said. “Where does gratitude fit in?” “Expressing gratitude is underrated; we rarely do it except in eulogies. The presenters suggested writing a letter to someone who did something you appreciate, and then calling them up and reading them the letter. They also recommended keeping a gratitude journal, or developing a nightly habit of climbing into bed and thinking of three things you’re thankful for from your day.” I heard lots about this a few weeks ago, when Rich was going through the gratitude section of the course. That Sunday, I suggested we each bring to lunch three objects representing things we were thankful for. I showed up with three small boxes. One held the heart-shaped locket Rich gave me for our 30th wedding anniversary. The second held pieces of wisdom I’d scribbled down on Post-It notes and pasted above my work desk, such as “Never chase a missed train … get a pastry and wait for the next one.” The third box held the keys to this house, our safe haven during quarantine.  My three boxes of gratitude “Taking this course during pandemic gave me the opportunity to reflect more deeply,” Rich said. “When everything is ‘normal’ you tend to accept things as they are. Now, faced with a life-changing situation, you can view it as an opportunity to learn or an impediment. The pandemic allowed me to learn about myself in a difficult situation. When daily stuff gets me aggravated — yes, I’m thinking of our struggles with the Spanish bank — I try to see it in the context of all the small, good things happening to me, and ask myself if it’s really that important.” He thought for a bit, and then he added, “Even in these challenging times, you can find small blessings that make you grateful. And those blessings make it possible to remember that every day is sacred.” Has anyone done something kind for you lately? What are you grateful for these days? Have moments of joy helped you survive the pandemic? If there was a happiness button, would you press it? Please let me know in the comments section below. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY This post is part of my ongoing series of articles on surviving the pandemic, if possible with some remnants of our sanity and good humor. Each week I provide tips, strategies, and reasons for hope.
Sign up HERE to get free stories in your inbox each week. Feel free to share this post link with family and friends. https://www.enjoylivingabroad.com/my-blog/the-happiness-course-rich-tells-all  White Wine Spritzers with Fruit are a lovely way to start off a date night. You can find the recipe on my Quarantine Cuisine page. It’s been one of those weeks — the kind that makes you think your head’s going to explode. For a start, Rich and I were enmeshed in a ghastly tangle with our Spanish bank involving a new pin number they’d sent out of the blue, texting it to our Seville phone number — which isn’t operational. No pin, no online banking. Not good. Multiple emails and phone conversations later, the bank grudgingly texted a new pin to our US phone. It didn’t work. Over Skype, the woman at the bank explained protocol now required sending the next pin by snail mail to our Seville apartment. At this point, the screen went dark and silent. “We’ve been cut off,” I said. Rich and I then proceeded to vent our feelings about the bank and its pin protocols, expressing ourselves with a good deal vigor for about five heated minutes. When we finally began to wind down, we heard the woman at the bank say brightly (in Spanish), “So, is there anything else I can help you with today?” Ooops! Apparently we were still on the line with her. Abashed, I mumbled “No, gracias,” and hung up. Then came good news from the county: my age group (65+) was now eligible for the Covid vaccine.  In the stampede for appointments, every time I logged on, it was already too late to get on the list with my provider, the county health department, or a pharmacy. Rich, determined to find an open time slot, took it on as a personal vendetta. Meanwhile, a friend in Seville retrieved the bank’s letter and emailed us the new pin. Surprise! That didn’t work either. “It’s like one of those ransom movies,” I said. “Where the kidnappers make the guy with the money race to a phone booth only to be sent on to another and yet another.” “Yeah, except this time, they’re holding the money hostage.”  This scene from the Spanish TV series Money Heist reflects how I envision our bankers celebrating every time they get to put off reuniting us with our money. I realized we needed something to take our minds off all the bother and frustration. “Date night on Saturday?” I said. Date nights have become one of our key pandemic strategies. We rely on them to break up the routine and refresh our minds, hearts, and spirits. If you’ve never done a date night at home, it’s really quite simple: all you need is food and some form of entertainment that sparks a conversation that isn’t about the pandemic, politics, or Spanish banking. It helps to find a fresh location to eat; we often use a folding table, the coffee table, even the floor in places like the living room or foyer. The point is to make the night feel different from the hundreds that have gone before. If it feels different, so do you. Saturday was pub night. The food was the sort of casual stuff you’d nibble in a bar: smoked salmon, bread sticks wrapped in prosciutto, goat cheese with rosemary, olives, artichoke hearts, and of course, wine. (Yes, I was inspired by Carlotta’s aperitivo in last week’s post.) I’d sprung for some high-end shrimp too, but when I opened the fridge, worrying smells emanated from the deli drawer. Recalling with a shudder the time Rich ate dubious shellfish in Mexico (you do not want to know the details), I wasted no time in flinging the shrimp into the outside trash bin. No matter, we had plenty to munch on. I arranged the food on "the bar," a big wooden cutting board set in the pass-through between the kitchen and dining area, then dragged over a couple of tall stools. To set the mood, I played a YouTube video of a pub with music and background chatter. I turned down the lights, added candles, and suddenly this everyday space was transformed into a cozy, intimate tavern.  Turning out the lights let us ignore the kitchen and imagine we were elsewhere. Once everything was in place, I went upstairs to collect Rich. For both of us, one of the most delightful parts of date night is the anticipation. When it’s Rich’s turn to arrange things, I sit upstairs listening to the bustle below, sniffing whatever delectable scents are wafting out of the kitchen, trying to guess what he’s got planned. I’ve written about some of these evenings: 1950s sci fi (The Virus That Saved Humanity), dive bars (Bar Hopping, Quarantine-Style), and winter wonderland (Relax: Nobody's Cancelling the Holidays). Others include a drive-in movie (on the couch), picnics (indoors and out), sunbathing (hot lights and beach towels), and themed film nights (Hitchcock classics). Scrolling for ideas, I’ve read plenty of articles about date nights written by people who have obviously never experienced one. “Read your favorite novel aloud” to your partner? That would take an average of eight to thirteen hours. Are we supposed to stay up till dawn? “Tackle a DIY project like painting a room together.” Yes, that wouldn’t be at all stressful at the end of a tense week. The most bonehead idea I heard (and I am not making this up) was “Clean out your closets.” Seriously? Clean out your closets as a way to reconnect with your soul mate? If Rich ever suggested that one, we’d be spending our next date night having a Zoom conference with a marriage counselor.  Honestly, does this say "date night" to you? Clearing out clutter can be satisfying, but not in that way. And then there’s “Just talk.” As you may have guessed, Rich and I are both champion chatterers, but after approximately a billion hours of one-on-one this year, even we need some fresh material. Sources such as 36 Questions: How to Fall in Love or 350 Good Questions to Ask have sparked hours of stimulating discussion. Here’s a sampling:
For many of us, the answer to that last one would be the video of the lawyer whose Zoom filter made him appear to be a talking cat. How did this happen? According to a 12-year-old in a YouTube video (and I think we can all agree that’s as expert as you get), you simply install Snap Camera and choose a filter, showing up for online dates as a cat, a pirate, or a talking potato with a halo of hearts. For now, I’m keeping my dates real and low tech. And Saturday night certainly needed no enhancing; we were celebrating Rich’s triumph in securing my first vaccine appointment. One of the lesser pharmacy chains had such a convoluted sign-up form that anyone with any sense soon abandoned hope and went elsewhere. But to Rich, a hardened veteran of the Spanish banking system, it was child’s play. I’ll be getting my inoculation this week, most likely just about the time you read this. Hallelujah! It’s almost enough to give me hope of someday getting back into our Spanish bank account. Have you ever done an at-home date night? What else is helping you stay sane in these crazy times? Let me know in the comments below. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY
This post is part of my ongoing series of articles on surviving the pandemic, if possible with some of our sanity and sense of humor intact. Each week I provide tips, strategies, and reasons for hope. Sign up HERE to get free stories in your inbox each week. Feel free to share this post link with family and friends. https://www.enjoylivingabroad.com/my-blog/how-and-why-to-have-great-date-nights-at-home  Patrick Abbott's popular Amsterdam coffee house, Monks, is still open for takeout, which he provides to home workers who come down from their apartments for coffee, fresh air, and a little human contact. I was both charmed and staggered to learn, when Spain first went into lockdown last year, that hairdressers were deemed essential workers. “Otherwise, how are old ladies supposed to manage if they can no longer wash their own hair?” said officials, no doubt breaking into an icy sweat at the idea of having to justify salon closure to their feisty abuelas. In France, recurring quarantines require closing all shops except those selling bare necessities. “Thankfully,’ remarked my friend Maer, “the French consider wine, pastries, and chocolates to be necessities!” Les Européens are so civilized, n'est-ce pas? I began wondering: Are Europeans finding ways to turn lockdown into a viable lifestyle? Are they learning how to adjust in ways that we haven't considered here in the US? When I reached out to friends in France, Italy, and the Netherlands, they poured out tales of much tighter restrictions on commerce, socializing, and mobility than anything we've seen in the States. And then — human nature being what it is — they explained how some people are circumventing them. “We are currently in our third lockdown with a nightly curfew. Be indoors by 9:00 pm and you can be back on the streets by 4:30 am,” says my friend Patrick, the Irish owner of the popular Amsterdam coffee house Monks Coffee Roasters. Lockdown requires non-essential shops to close. “This is being flouted like a badly run speakeasy with unmarked bags and bizarre hand signals. The basic rule of law is, if you sell food or medicine, you can open your doors. ‘You want fries with those new pants/washing machine/garden chairs?’”  In Turin, Italy, Paolo and Carlotta credit Luna's sweet personality with helping them get through lockdown. Naturally I asked how everybody was staying (relatively) sane. “Good question!” says Carlotta, an Italian tour guide and chef living in Turin, Italy with her boyfriend Paolo. “I would love to answer that I made the most of all this free time by doing a lot of exercise and eating well; the reality is I've been eating more comfort food than ever! What kept us sane during the toughest times was our dog, Luna; we adopted her in early March 2020, by chance just before the first lockdown started. She is our furry princess, she's the funniest and most sociable dog ever, and she gave us a legal reason to get out for a walk when it was forbidden!” “People are renting dogs on leash time,” reports Patrick. “I’ve also heard of cat walking taking hold, but can’t confirm.” It gets crazier than that; in March the Spanish news showed locals walking plastic dogs, chickens, even goldfish; the police were not amused and soon put a stop to it. “If I could avoid doom-scrolling, I would be saner,” observes Maer, an American living in Montpellier, France, with her husband, Mark. “We’re retired from the film industry and I think that has ruined TV and most films for us. We can no longer manage that wonderful suspension of disbelief they require. We get bored and wander off to read.” They also take online classes, including Yale’s Science of Well-being (similar to Rich’s UC Berkeley happiness course).  Maer and Mark in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Patrick and his Dutch fiancé, Margreit, amuse themselves with AI. “We got one of those ‘Hey Google’ speaker things," he says, "and although it was slightly creepy at first, we enjoy the randomness of asking her questions, teasing her, challenging her, and making her play obscure music. I know, it’s a machine, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers; she’s the only stranger you're allowed to have in your house at the moment.” Carlotta says she and Paolo “do an aperitivo on Fridays to cheer ourselves up. Every week I put together something different: olives, a good salami, some mortadella cubes, a selection of cheeses, croutons with butter and anchovies, salmon, ham, savory pie... you name it! We open a good bottle and do a little ‘party,’ just the two of us.” Her favorite comfort recipe: spinach squares. [Carlotta’s Spinach Square Recipe]  Rich and I met Carlotta and Paolo in 2019 when they hosted an EatWith dinner in their home. We started with a delicious aparativo much like this, accompanied by glasses of Rocca dei Forti, a gorgeous, dry, sparkling white wine accented with a dash of vermouth. Patrick just moved and will be kitchenless until March. “We live with a loan microwave oven and takeaway food. Not great but we’re still alive … just. Once the kitchen arrives, the first thing I will prepare is my sensational Shepherd’s Pie. It’s a secret recipe handed down through generations of my family.” Oh yes, I talked him into sharing it with us! [Patrick’s Shepherd’s Pie Recipe] Everyone struggles. “I work in tourism," says Carlotta, "and the biggest challenge is figuring out when I'll be able to work again and how tourism habits will change. The second biggest challenge is fitting in clothes after all that comfort food!” For Maer, staying put is hard. “My main jam is going places, walking around and looking at things; having to cool my heels has been tough. But then I realize that the only thing wrong with my present moment is my idea of how the future will be. If I manage to turn that off, all is well. We’re warm, dry, well-fed, and well-befriended, and that’s enough.”  Maer enjoys a quiet moment at the Petit Palais, home to the City of Paris Museum of Fine Arts. When in Paris, she and Mark live in a tiny 220-square foot apartment. At the coffee house, Patrick deals with maskless conspiracy theorists and other tests to his patience and diplomacy. On a personal level? “The biggest challenge I faced was grief. We lost two family members back in Ireland to Covid, and being unable to be at funerals due to travel restrictions was difficult. My aunty was a particularly close person to me and watching on a computer screen my mum, that I haven’t hugged for over a year, at the coffin of her sister was heartbreaking.” None of them expects to be vaccinated any time soon. Carlotta and Maer are hoping for fall; Patrick says, “By Christmas.” All three feel they’ve learned a lot during lockdown. “I had the illusion to be in control my future; well, that was a big fat lie!” says Carlotta. “I'm learning to enjoy the simple things that I have always taken for granted.” The pandemic, observes Patrick, “made me realize how entitled and indulged we are as a species. Personally I took stock of what I had and how much I actually need.” Maer echoes this sentiment. “It’s a superpower to be comfortable with very little.”  Patrick enjoying a lighthearted moment at Monks. When I asked Patrick if he thought the world would ever return to normal, he said, “There is never really a ‘normal.' We are always evolving. Now there is a shift in mentality and behavior, and I think it’s a good one. I’m hopeful for humanity as a whole. Fighting a pandemic as opposed to a war has made the planet smaller and made us realize how very vulnerable we are.” “Holy smokes are we all interconnected,” says Maer. “The butterfly effect is very real.” This has been a rough time for everyone. As one gastroenterologist put it, using the terminology of her field, “If 2020 was a drink, it would be a colonoscopy prep.” While 2021 offers reasons for cautious optimism, the pandemic is far from over, the outcome still uncertain. “At the beginning I thought we would return to a better normal,” says Carlotta. “Now I just hope it won’t be worse. But I can’t hide a sparkle of hope for us to learn a lesson and be a better society.” Amen to that! How's your pandemic going? Any tips for adapting gracefully to the new abnormal while we wait for our vaccines?  In other news, people are starting to dress up their cats for Zoom work meetings. Mr. Fluffy looks worried he will now be expected to pitch in and help write the reports. This post is part of my ongoing series of articles on surviving the pandemic, if possible with some of our sanity and sense of humor intact. Each week I provide tips, strategies, and reasons for hope. Sign up HERE to get free stories in your inbox each week. Feel free to share this post link with family and friends. https://www.enjoylivingabroad.com/my-blog/europes-creative-ways-of-adapting-to-the-new-abnormal YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY |
 Karen McCann
Welcome!
I'm an American travel writer based in Spain and currently living in California. As we journey through the pandemic together, my blog provides a regular supply of survival tips, comfort food recipes, and the wry humor we all need to lighten our hearts on dark days. I think of my blog as an ongoing conversation, so please join in and leave comments at the end of my posts. Sign up below to get updates when I publish anything new. 
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