In a bubble

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I’ve found it difficult to write recently.  I have plenty of excuses as to why, and with our son on summer vacation until just a couple days ago, I could easily say my role as stay-at-home dad is the main reason.  But the truth is, I just haven’t been motivated to write.  Anyone reading this now knows that summer 2020 has been far from any normal summer— even the word “normal” isn’t normal anymore.  Now we talk about “old normal” and “new normal” and say things like, we just can’t go back to the old normal, which in some ways could be great but in other ways feels really eerie and uncomfortable.  Even the term “stay-at-home” has taken on a very different meaning this year given the various quarantines/self-quarantines we’ve been doing as a result of the terrifying pandemic we’re a part of.  In fact many of us have been mostly staying at, working and studying from home since… mid-March?!  That’s 5 months already.  And for those of you like us who are used to going somewhere (even home) for the summer, we’re definitely disappointed if not downright depressed that winter holiday travel now looks to be out of the question as well. Like with many other things in life, being in limbo can feel much worse than knowing the answer is definitely no.

In our collective memory, life hasn’t been disrupted to this degree in a very long time (ever?), and the future has never seemed as ambiguous or uncertain.  Although there are super heroes among us who have seemingly taken advantage of the pandemic to sculpt their bodies, hone their you-name-it skills and become more creative and productive (and annoying?) than ever before, you can’t fault anyone for not keeping on top of their game, or their sanity, these past several months.  This has been hard.  Really hard. 

Not only has the anxiety and ambiguity caused by COVID-19 changed the very ways we interact, eat, shop, travel, go to work/school, live— it’s also shaped our attitudes and the ways we react to other people and the circumstances we find ourselves in. As a teacher, I used to tell my students that the most dangerous 4 letter word that starts with the letter “F” is not the word they think it is. It’s fear. And fear and worry are emotions that are especially wasteful because they really only yield stress and frustration. As I remember a teacher telling me, worry is like a rocking horse— it keeps you going but gets you nowhere.

And yet it’s so hard not to worry! So much is at stake in many places around the world, not only the pandemic but with politics, issues of race and racism, the environment, the global economy and so much more. And at the center of the convergence of these issues is of course my homeland. The country hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. is seriously sruggling to contain a public health crisis that has become toxic in ways even beyond the staggering number of lives lost.  Instead of being united against the spread of COVID-19, Americans are making it visibly clear that they’re divided into camps, largely along political lines, and I have to say that watching the drama unfold from afar has been unbelievably surreal.  It’s really too depressing to write about actually, so if I could sum it up in one tongue-and-cheek phrase, it would be that we’ve learned there’s a huge difference between oxymorons (“social distancing”) and actual morons!

Now let me get back to Thailand, and being in a bubble. I’m guessing that many of you reading this have felt isolated, disconnected, and maybe trapped over the past several months. I’ve certainly felt these emotions too, and five months since the first lockdown in Bangkok, I’m struck by how much I still feel like I’m in a bubble.  But what’s interesting now is that the bubble feels very different than when this pandemic started.  You see, as of today (August 20, 2020), Thailand has not had a locally transmitted case of COVID-19 for 86 straight days.  That’s right— the country is going on 3 straight months without a single reported local case of the disease.  For a country of 70 million people, this is nothing short of incredible.  In fact, at this point the only country to have a longer streak of zero local transmission of COVID-19 is the Holy See (also known as the Vatican City, the world’s smallest sovereign state with just over 800 people). And what’s more, if people weren’t wearing masks, you might very well believe walking down the streets and into the shopping malls and restaurants of Bangkok today that you had suddenly been transported back to 2019.

So how is Thailand doing this?  In addition to a strong commitment by both the government and the residents to take this disease seriously from the very beginning, no commercial flights have been allowed into the country for months now so the country’s borders have essentially remained sealed off.  Repatriation flights have recently been allowed into the country, in addition to other government-approved flights, but everyone on these flights must go into a state quarantine for 14 days.  In fact there have been a number of returnees who have tested positive for COVID-19 while in quarantine, but given these cases have been caught, the virus has so far been successfully contained at the border. 

There’s no guarantee of course that this can continue, and the country’s economy is already feeling the effects of the heavy losses to its tourism industry, so the government will need to eventually figure out a solution that allows tourists (or at least some tourists) back. But for now, the country is clearly putting public health and safety first. And while the Thai government is currently facing other significant challenges outside of the scope of the pandemic, it’s certainly reassuring to live in a place where there’s some genuine hope for eventually beating COVID-19, where daily life seems fairly normal again, and where mask wearing is never an issue for debate.

So Thailand is a bubble now in more ways than one. While circumstances have improved, restrictions on commercial flights mean that we can’t travel out of the country, and even when commercial flights do start, the mandatory 14-day state quarantine currently in place effectively prohibits us from leaving Thailand as we typically have just 2 or 3 weeks in total for our visits home. And both our homes aren’t safe yet to travel to anyway, nor necessarily is taking a long haul flight. So for now anyway, our global trio will be staying put.

If you’ve been wondering about the picture I added to this post, Ako captured Kai and I in this pretty awesome pose at an interactive 3D art museum in Bangkok last year, and I thought the picture to be apropos with the theme of this story, though thankfully none of our situations are this claustrophobic. 😁 There’s no doubt a little humor goes a long way, particularly during difficult times, and we hope that each of you are doing what you can to keep joy and peace in your lives while maintaining good health. Let’s continue to do our best to generate and share some light into this world which so desperately needs it. And let me end for now by sharing my meditation prayer:

May hope guide your heart, may logic guide your mind, and may love and kindness always guide your actions.