The Upside of Downtime
How the Unsung Urban “Wilderness” Turned a Bleak Period Wondrous
Outside my house, everything looked peachy. There was the cerulean California sky, the warm desert air of the Santa Ana winds, the gardeners with their blaring leaf blowers, the mutt next door barking at the postman, and the ruffle-blooms of my white roses broadcasting their intense floral scent through my open window. But it wasn’t a normal morning in the City of Angels.
On my desk, lay the airplane ticket for Europe; next to it, my iPhone jammed with incoming dispatches from my mother.
“It’s chaos here!!!!! Please, Maddalena, don’t fly to Italy now!!!” I browsed her exclamation point-filled texts reaching me from thousands of miles away and an ocean apart, to sorrowfully learn how my natal country was already choked by the Coronavirus.
That was when life turned upside down for me; and everyone else on Earth.
We humans have the uncanny ability to see the world as we wish it to be. We can somehow ignore unpleasant news that might interrupt our life routines, thinking all along that whatever “it” is, won’t happen to us. And while this sort of denial might seem Pollyannaish, it is likely a source of optimism as well.
Recently, it was a global pandemic, but uncertain times are always lurking around the corner in…
