Captain's Log - Day 59

Captain’s Log – Day 59 – This is Us

Hello Friends –

How’s everyone doing today? Have you gone through all the stages yet? You know – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. At some point, we just need to accept what is happening and learn to work with it because, unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere anytime soon.

Are you craving some quiet time away from your spouse, kids, parents and/or roommates or are you living alone and craving any form of human contact? Either way, I think we can all agree that being in quarantine/isolation sucks. That’s pretty much the only thing I think EVERYONE can agree on. Never before have we had so much in common with people around the world. No matter where you are on this big blue planet, every single one of us will be forever changed by this pandemic and we will never forget how the world came to a screeching halt in the year 2020. The rapid spread of this virus from one country to another, into every nook and cranny of the world, has made it abundantly clear that we are all connected in ways we may never have realized. We have no control over where we started out in this life but we do have some control on the path we take and what we will leave behind. I expect many of us have been giving serious thought to where we want to go when we’re allowed to roam free again. The one thing that is crystal clear is that we need each other now more than ever and we truly are all in this together.



Just imagine you are a certain color in a Jackson Pollock painting. Where does your color start and end? What colors do you intersect with? How far out does your color travel? Seeing the Jackson Pollock study painting above reminded me of a beautiful scene in the show This is Us where one of the characters, Kevin, tries to explain death to his nieces. We may only physically be here for 100± years but who we are, who we love, what we do, where we go and how we treat people will leave a mark long after we are physically gone from this world.

We’ve recently had to offer our virtual condolences to friends and family because we couldn’t be there to hug them and stand by their side as they said goodbye to their loved ones. But, as Kevin said, just because someone dies, just because you can’t see them or talk to them anymore, it doesn’t mean they’re not still in the painting, and I think that’s maybe the point of the whole thing. There’s no dying, there’s no you or me or them. It’s just us. And this sloppy, wild colorful magical thing that has no beginning, it has no end… it’s right here. I think it’s us.

You can watch the scene here: https://youtu.be/xh-Tof_QxKU

I look forward to the day we can get out, get close, hug our loved ones and really see each other again.

Take care, be safe, stay home and stay strong.

Physically distant but socially engaged,
~MB