Do as Bill Murray says
Bill Murray knows the answer to our COVID angst
I admitted last week to having experienced an existential COVID crisis. Why am I here? What's the point of me being here? What's the point of anyone being here unless of course, you're a physician, nurse, healthcare worker, grocery store worker, sanitary worker, or any other essential service worker. Bill Murray has an opinion. Not about me specifically, although I'm sure he'd have lots to say, but about our current situation.
It just doesn't matter.
In the movie Meatballs, Bill Murray's character gives a pep talk worthy of a Pulitzer Prize. In a part of his rant, he exclaims, “Even if God in heaven above comes down and points his hand at our side of the field…it just wouldn't matter. It just doesn't matter if we win or we lose. It just doesn’t matter! It just doesn’t matter!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TogGxzlfhMBill's philosophizing can help us navigate physical distancing and saying at home. His monologue prods us to ask ourselves, "Who are we to say what's good or bad?" Good things can lead to bad things, bad things can lead to good things. Does any of it matter?He’s not saying, “nothing matters”, but rather asking us to see things for what they are: neutral happenings that can be good or bad depending on the story we attach to them. He's also saying: lighten the f*ck up. It just doesn't matter.Put another way, could it be that whatever happens at the end of the day doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things? We can drive ourselves crazy with our mental ping-pong: Things are great! Things are terrible! Things are great! Things are terrible! Much of what is happening right now is out of our control. We can’t control COVID. Why not focus on what we can control, like our own happiness and the happiness of others?
Life Lessons from Bill Murray
The documentary The Bill Murray Stories: Life Lessons Learned From a Mythical Man is heartwarming. It demonstrates how much joy one person can bring to others. In spectacularly-ordinary fashion in some cases, like doing a stranger's dishes, Bill brings warm fuzzies to the lives of many an unsuspecting victim. His is a superpower.When we don't have Bill to pop into our lives for some cheerful levity, we need to take matters into our own hands. We can't control COVID, but we can control our happiness.
The spider incident
The moments where I've felt the most joy over the past 6 weeks have been when I've given surprise gifts to others. Those gifts were sometimes directed at me, like the ones I gave myself after a five-hour support chat with Apple...on a Saturday. Did I mention the spider that snuck into my condo around the same time? I dislike spiders. I was forced to trap it in a glass jar all by myself. Apparently, it's a harmless tunnel weaver spider. I learned that after some Google research. It was a five-hour-long support chat. I figured, why not use the wait time for learning and exposure therapy? I also suffered an anxiety attack after it was done over the amount of precious time I had wasted on a five-hour-long support chat.Flowers from the local community grocery store and a latte it is, thank you very much.
Daily Happiness Upkeep
Thanks to research done by Shawn Achor, we have 5 steps we can take to increase our happiness:
Exercise
Meditate for as little as 2 minutes a day
Send an email, text, or message to someone to thank or praise them
Perform Random Acts of Kindness. Bill's a megastar in this arena.
Write down 5 things for which you're grateful. Change it up every day. You don't get to write down pillow top mattress or your milk frother or your dog on every list. Good health can make every list, IMHO.
Who knows what's good or bad? If we focus on what we can control, like our happiness, instead of things we can't we'll feel more even-keeled. Everything else just doesn't matter.x KM