'Worry well, worry wisely.’
Skatepark School
Lesson 04 : ‘'Worry well, worry wisely.’
“In media res” is Latin for “in the midst of things.” You’re probably more familiar with the concept than you think, as many stories plunge us right into the middle of a story, and then catch us up later on what happened before.
So even though this is called Skate Park School, it’s more about the meta-idea that learning and development can take place anywhere and everywhere. So I’m going to skip past the skate park and jump into the middle. The middle in this case is The Library.
In case you didn’t know it, I am the world’s biggest library fan. I love libraries. Public libraries. I’m progressive enough to recognize their value and relevance in many different ways, and I’m old school enough to still consider books to be the intellectual foundation atop which every great library is built. I know, that’s a statement worthy of being dissected, deconstructed, and critiqued. I’m fine with that. I love libraries and I love books.
So I went to unbuckle my two youngest students from our automobile as we parked outside the library, and one of them leaped out with the whoop! of a pirate and the exuberance of a baby kangaroo. Those are exuberant, right?
The youngest, a youthful age two, gesticulated frantically and used his rapidly-evolving vocabulary to slow me down.
“Matt! Matt!” He said, repeatedly, pointing to his senior citizen four-year old bro. “Matt!”
After a not-great length of time, I remembered that his brother’s name (and my son) is not “Matt,” so I cleverly used this information to determine that he was talking about something else.
Are you wanting…
I asked slowly,
…a mask?
He nodded vigorously.
COVID-19 is a thing. A real thing. It’s not “…just a little cold,” or “…just a bad strain of the flu,” or anything that deserves a “just” in front of it.
A 2- and 4-year old chat about life and worms and such at the skate park.
I have heard countless times over the last year and a half some sort of reference to “worry.” Oftentimes it’s something along the lines of “…yeah, I mean I’m not worried, but if you want to wear a mask, go for it.”
In my lifetime, I can’t think of a period when the word “worry” has been more casually misused. Or of a time when it’s used with greater hypocrisy.
Because a great deal of the time, the people talking so dismissively about a pandemic that has hurt so many aren’t suggesting that we shouldn’t worry period. Many of the people saying these words are desperately, intensely, deeply worried. But they’re worried about other things.
They’re worried about communists and Antifa taking over the country.
They’re worried about people of different colors or shades or religions having too great a voice, too great a presence, or too great a proximity.
They’re worried that God can protect them from COVID, (i.e. no need for masks, but he can’t protect them from criminals (i.e. the people above), and therefore they need to be armed with the greatest firepower possible.
They’re worried. Oh, they’re worried.
Is worry bad? A euphemism works a little better. Nobody complains about being prepared. But what is being prepared, except Worry with a Strategy?
Most people aren’t going to fault someone for thinking ahead, acting proactively, and being prepared. That’s why the “issue” over wearing masks is so, so stupid.
Wearing a mask properly might save your life. Or it might not.
Wearing a mask properly might save someone else’s life. Or it might not.
More likely, the twin actions of mask-wearing and social distancing act on a continuum rather than a binary switch.
They help.
They’re not the end-all solution. They simply help reduce risk. To pretend otherwise is asinine.
Does being prepared mean you’re living a life of fear and worry? Most people would say no.
But many are just fine with casually throwing around some variation of “…if you’re worried,” as if they’re somehow brave patriots doing something courageous and valiant and principled by…not wearing a mask in the presence of others.
We travel on this path and in this world together.
As an aside, if you are a Christian, and find mask-wearing dumb, then do not ever, ever talk to me with any moral authority about the Gospel, about compassion, about Jesus loving all the children of the world, or about the love of God at large. Do not. You had a chance to make a statement about how you value others as brothers and sisters in Christ, and because you value them, you are willing to take certain small, doable, non-invasive actions that may help them avoid something.
These things might help a little, or they might help a lot. But they are a small, a tiny, a completely doable way in which we can show and share our respect and compassion for others by taking some small steps and actions to mitigate risk.
As an aside to the aside, and because I loathe hypocrisy and attempt to face my own head on, let’s take a leap back to the beginning of AIDS in America. Let’s have some consistency, some empathy, and even a little bit of humor in looking at the extremes historically. Of course there is one huge glaring flaw in the parallel logic of the comparison I’m about to make, but I think it’s worth taking a few seconds to process. It’s this:
In the 1980s, there was something spreading rapidly, and people were dying, and people were scared, and science was working on solutions, and people on the extremes demanded that it was society’s right to know who had HIV/AIDS.
In the 2020s, there is something spreading rapidly, and people are dying, and people are scared, and science is working fast on solutions, and people on the extremes - and not far from the mainstream - are demanding that it’s society’s right to know who’s vaccinated and who’s not.
I am not engaging in the false equivalency of saying that getting vaccinated or not getting vaccinated are equally valid choices. I am not saying that. What I am asking is that we be aware of a certain amount of hypocrisy in these conversations and recognize how difficult they are. In the same sense, we now have people, with no apparent disconnect, who are okay advocating for people’s individual control over their own bodies when it comes to abortion, yet have no problem easily advocating mandated vaccines for other people’s bodies.
There is a deep flaw in this comparison and I recognize that, but I also think it is worth pointing out that these are really difficult actions to take when it comes to Protecting the Group versus Protecting the Individual.
These are tough, tough things to figure out, and that’s why I’m so angry that we couldn’t all have agreed early on to to all take the easy, basic, simple steps to help minimize risk to ourselves, those around us, and get a grip on COVID before it reached critical mass and we’re forced to look at nuclear-ish options.
I’m angry that we all couldn’t commit to those easy steps together.
Back to the 2-year old
You sure you want a mask? I asked.
He looked to his brother, and back to me. “Lah,” he said, which is how he says “yeah.”
So we swarmed into the library, the wonderful place I call the White Blood Cells of Culture, and they pulled out books and we read and they checked them out almost completely by themselves, and we talked to new friend blue-haired library rockstar Keely about shoes, and another librarian came out who I hadn’t see in a year and half came out and said Oh my god I remember when you came here every week when he was an infant and you carried him, tucked up against you, all over the library,” and I smiled and felt a sense of community and wonder and love,
and we he kept his mask on the whole time,
and we left, and read outside for a while longer, and he took his mask off,
and then we got in the car and drove, and took a short hike, and was maskless for those activities, and then we came to the school to get his oldest siblings, and he grabs his mask.
”Matt! Matt!” He insisted. Again, this means “mask.”
I helped him put it on, and he kept it on as we trudged onto school grounds.
A 2- and 4-year old squat down to help a caterpillar on a leaf-strewn path.
We need to worry well.
We need to model well, and always wonder who is paying attention and who is watching and what our actions mean to those younger,
and we need to get better at worrying well. At letting worry guide our present actions to help us be prepared for the future. Worry shouldn’t stop us in our tracks most of the time.
A little bit of the right amount of worry should help us to continue confidently on the track we want to be on, and avoid getting derailed.
A sampling of Other learnings and conversations of note
We spoke of the importance of gratitude, and thanked a man from the Parks Department for picking up garbage and helping keep the skate park nice.
We spoke of the importance of not just thinking nice things about others, but finding the courage to say them, including to strangers sometimes.
Age 2
Learning from his medium bro how to check out books by himself-ish
Identifying the main colors of caterpillars
Telling the difference between dead leaves and living leaves
Age 4
Navigating the library checkout system one hundred(ish) by himself
Learning about the different parts of leaves and main type of trees (deciduous, conifer)
Reminding his younger bro to loudly and thankfully say grace before eating lunch in public. While kneeling.
Investigating the movement patterns of wild caterpillars
Age 11
Learning the optimal living quarters for different types of wild salamanders
Many good questions about the 1979 Iran hostage crisis and America’s role in 20th century geopolitics as we finished watching Argo
Age 14
Listening to her speak excitedly about heredity and the role of epigenetics in shaping human traits
Many good questions about the 1979 Iran hostage crisis and America’s role in 20th century geopolitics as we finished watching Argo
