Sunday #8: The New Sunday
What makes a Sunday?
As a therapist who sees problems through a "narrative" lens, I look for how society (people) and culture (beliefs and attitudes) are constructed. Generally, it is a circular affair, with society constructing culture, and culture influencing society to affect how people think about themselves, life, and the world.
I think Sundays are also constructed, and they get input from both influences: culture and society. Sundays, for sure, are a product or an affect of culture and society. For example, we would not need Sundays if we did not have a work week, or a Sabbath, or church services.
They say that on the seventh day, god rested, but then don't you ever consider that this story was made up, just perhaps, by the churches, to ensure that people had nothing to do on Sunday but attend mass? It is a pretty great business plan to force every other business but yours to close on Sundays. Thankfully, the churches are losing their influence on culture and society. We don't have to go to church on Sunday anymore--we can do whatever we want to, if we are not working.
What makes a Sunday?
This afternoon, after sex with my boyfriend, I went in and made the bed before finishing dinner. Why, you might ask, did I need to make the bed so late in the afternoon, given it was a Sunday and we would be going to bed in just a few hours? I made the bed because it is something that I have done, and can still do, even though many of the things I have done on Sundays are temporarily not doable. I made the bed because it feels normal, and I need to do things that feel normal today, even though making the bed on Sunday is far from normal for most others. I made the bed because I need to take a bit of the old normal into this new normal.
What makes a Sunday?
The streets were so quiet today. They are usually quiet on Sunday, but this quiet was not the usual Sunday quiet. This was odd silent. It was social distancing quiet. I think I am having an easier time adjusting to the social distancing than my boyfriend, mostly because this government-enforced social distancing is not as hard for me to accept as the culturally-enforced social distancing that has been going on in the world for the last 10 years of so.
What makes a Sunday?
There were a ton of people at the Farmer's Market today, even as early as 8am. Half of them were wearing masks of some sort, some just bandannas over their mouth and nose, as if to say, "This does nothing more than make me feel better than you!" Outward signs of fear and misinformation. Perhaps face masks to protect healthy people is the same as Diet Coke helping you losing weight? I don't wear a mask, but I did wear flip-flops. The only downside of my not wearing a mask was that others could see my smirk.
What makes a Sunday?
I have not put clothes on since I went to bed last night, and it is now mid-afternoon. My body must feel like dogs feel when their owners stay home all day. Do you ever give your body a break from clothing for a while? In Los Angeles, many people wear clothing that looks like the body is trying to get out of it. Whose intention is in charge of the look--the body or the person? When I was a child I would wear pajamas to bed, and the tops always matched the bottoms--why was that? It made sense to me at the time, but from where I sit today nothing could make less sense. I wonder how many other ways of thinking have been turned on their head since childhood?
What makes a Sunday?
I would be lying if I said I wasn't worried. On Sundays, I try to give worry a day off. and yet believe it or not, worry works overtime on these days. In some ways, it feels like a normal Sunday, in that the boyfriend and I are both home, relaxing, cooking, lounging, and in other ways it is anything but normal. The quiet is too quiet, the air is too clear, the fridge is too full, my week is too empty, the Monday is too Sunday, the day is too night. And yet we continue to relax, cook, and lounge. Some things carry on.
What makes a Sunday?
I have been calling or messaging friends and family to check in on them and connect during this thing. Everyone seems to be doing alright. I am doing alright as well, or at least better than when the shit first hit the fan. We figure it out, you know? My brother called me the other day. We have not talked for over five years (how I prefer it), but now that there is a world threat he thought it appropriate to call and "check in". Is it, though? He didn't care how I was doing before this happened, so why pretend to now? I saw the call and let it go to voicemail. I listened to his awkward message, which of course did not acknowledge the awkwardness of calling me out of the blue after five years, and then I immediately deleted the message. I won't be calling him back. The corona-virus does not make him any more important to me now than he was a month ago. Despite the whole world changing, some things remain the same.
What makes a Sunday?
I feel like I have a high level of resilience, built primarily from having more than a fair share of challenges to face over the years. Silver linings, right? Whatever happens with this virus, even if I become infected and become ill, I am sure I will find a way to respond to it without dramatics. I didn't always feel resilient. When I was younger, I feared that the wrong wind at the right angle would easily blow me into oblivion. I was easily undone. I remember, back in the 90's, when I was driving patients with AIDS to their doctor appointments as part of a volunteer task, I once had a passenger who told me the most horrific story about an incident in his life. I asked him how he found the will to go on afterwards, and he said to me (I will never forget it), he said to me that when you find yourself in unspeakable circumstances, you either find a way to deal or die. That is the best definition of resilience, isn't it? You find a way to deal, no matter what it is. Or you die.
What makes a Sunday?
Sundays are for movies, yes? Not just for movies, of course, but movies are a wonderful activity for Sundays. Unfortunately, the movie theaters are all closed for now due to the social distancing, so going to the theater is temporarily removed from the activity list. If I am honest, going to the movies on Sundays has not been high on my activity list for several years, mostly because the movies are less appealing to me, and also because these less appealing movies cost nearly twenty bucks to see in the theater. So Sundays are for movies, if they are viewed at home. This last Sunday I persuaded my boyfriend to let me show him "What's Up, Doc?", the classic 1972 screwball comedy starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal, and introducing the great Madeline Kahn. They just don't get any better than this movie, and Streisand and O'Neal were at the top of their games in '72, both major film stars at the prime of their beauty. To his credit, the boyfriend loved it, but I just never know when I show him something from "the old days", and yes, 1972 is the old days these days.
The year 1972 holds a fair amount of nostalgia for me, but I am not sure why. I was only ten years old, after all--how much can one reminisce for from that age? It was far from an ideal time, to be sure, as the Vietnam War was still waging and the country was also reeling from Watergate. But at ten years of age I knew nothing about either of those disasters--a good thing I suppose. My nostalgia for "What's Up, Doc?" cannot even be traced to 1972 as I did not see it that year--I saw it many years later as an adult catching up on Barbra Streisand movies. In 1972 I did not even know who she was, can you believe it? But nostalgia is rarely about accuracy, is it? In the current state our country is in I find it comforting to relax on a Sunday and watch a movie that makes me long for a time I never even lived in truth: when Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal were both young and beautiful and tan, when the movies on occasion were about falling in love while sharing a madcap caper through the streets of San Francisco, and the music of Cole Porter could still drive a soundtrack. What will the young people of today be nostalgic about in the future from 2020?
Later in my life, as an adult in the 90's, Sundays meant something different altogether. Back then, they were anything but a day of rest--I worked nearly every Sunday in the 90's in one capacity or another. There was something else though. As a young man, rest did not appeal to me as much as it does now. Rest meant that I was not doing something. In my 20's the primary goal of any activity was to increase the possibility of falling in love, whereas in my 30's the goal shifted a bit. In my 30's I just felt I needed to work as much as I possibly could regardless of the cost to my personal freedom and happiness--much like when you force yourself to eat another piece of birthday cake even though you know it will make you vomit.
I think that as I got older, I realized that those goals were never about enjoying the moment, they were instead about gaining something for the future. If one is always concerned about the future, relaxation is impossible, because true relaxation is only possible with mindfulness. Mindfulness is about being in the moment, and when one is in the moment, even doing nothing is a fruitful activity.
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What makes a Sunday?
Sundays are no longer defined by one thing like they were 50 years ago. Back then, as I mentioned at the beginning, all you could really do was go to church, which most people did, and get together with family, which most people also did. Now, the sky's the limit, or at least as high as your imagination and resources. I like taking it back old school, except of course for the church part. That part can stay in the past! But the getting together with family is very important to me--and by family I mean my boyfriend and my close friends here in Los Angeles. That is my family today. This is why the current crisis is so distressing, because it separates us from people we love to little or great extent. That separation is not natural, but then I suppose that the whole idea of "Sunday" is unnatural in itself--it is a cultural construct, again as earlier mentioned. But even constructs can feel natural over time.
Perhaps the current construct of social distancing will feel more natural in time too, but I have my doubts, simply because there is so much about it that is unnatural. And yet we are adaptive creatures, are we not? As I said before, social distancing was happening long before COVID-19 came into the picture. Many people had already moved most of their most important relationships online already, and they were perfectly fine with that setup. No muss no fuss, right? Well, I like the muss, and I like the fuss, so you can call me old-fashioned or you can call me stubborn. I will proudly admit to both, because there are things worth being old-fashioned about, and things worth being stubborn about. Sundays are one of those things.
That's what makes a Sunday.
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