It is day six of the pandemic.

The virus is everywhere now. It is hiding in plain sight, in places we forget, in kisses and sips from glasses and rubbing eyes and touching countertops. Breathing feels like a dangerous act, but it’s all that propels us forward. Breathing is the final frontier, and if going into isolation will allow us to continue, so be it. 

I have been thinking a lot about what all of this means, if it is to mean anything beyond inconvenience, disappointment, and tragedy. I believe it does.

People are saying this could be the war of our lifetime, this could be the major global catastrophe of whose horrors we’ll speak one day. I am reminded of my late grandfather’s retelling of his experience in France during WWII, and of stories from Holocaust survivors, and of the horrors of the Vietnam War. The emotional impact of these distant events is but an echo of heavy bells tolling in the distance now. 

Pain is strange this way, I think. It is not real until it is upon us, in our backyards, at our neighbour’s doorstep, at our own. In a flash of what could become of us through all of this, I can feel, intimately, the pain of so many millennia of affliction. The disarray, the fear, the hope.

I am compelled to believe that, if you are living through something momentous and unprecedented, a good many of us ought to shoulder the responsibility of recording history. It’s hard to see the present as anything which will one day be called ‘history’, especially when present events possess a question mark for an outcome. But if this cataclysmic event is to be even more monumental than it already is, then the insights of those enduring it are already of urgent value. Already I am trying to remember everything, every feeling, every energetic shift, in order to be able to pass the experience along to those who will not remember it nor have lived through it. In order to make meaning of something which will alter our lives forever. 

On day six of the pandemic, I am taking solace in scents.

There is a great deal of comfort to be found in smells.

Conversely, of course, there is a great deal of discomfort to be found in unfamiliar smells, in foul smells, in smells which trigger unhappy memories. But the power of smell to awaken such reactions, comfort or otherwise, is compelling.

Lighting a candle with the scent of orange blossom, citrus and basil has had an unspeakable impact upon my sense of wellbeing, at least temporarily. This morning I put on the kettle in my kitchen and filled a mug with instant coffee granules. The smell that was released as the hot water met the black coffee sediment instantly warmed me, and I took the mug back to my desk and rested it beside the scented candle. I lit a stick of lavender incense and I leaned back, closed my eyes. A whole world exists in the intermingling of these three scents, one which bears nothing in common with the global fear as of late, the panic which gripped me so recently, the loneliness. I am comforted by the familiarity of these scents, perhaps by what they remind me of, though I can’t pick a specific memory for any of them.

Interesting how our bodies react in times of crisis. Aside from the anxiety-provoked stomach aches and occasional stress break-out, I have found my body yearning for these smells, and yearning for certain tastes, for certain physical sensations. I have saved recipes for stews and soups, hearty recipes with beans and lentils and rich stocks, garlic and cream and wine. It’s as though my body is preparing me for a long winter. Yesterday I ran, because my body craved the motions, and I wanted to exist in the physical for a while. I ran with a great weight upon me at first, slowly, until my legs got accustomed to the motion and my strides evened out. I ran north through Drumcondra, taking turns down meandering residential streets with their red brick facades and colourful doors, noticing how the movement felt in my feet and knees and in my breath, my steady, heavy breath. I ran to the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland, where, upon being scolded by an old woman for running, I spent a half an hour walking slowly amongst the trees and plants. The sound of birds chirping, unfiltered, immediate, drove me to pause my podcast and listen.

I felt simple and small walking there in the gardens, listening to my footsteps and the wind through thick trees and the singing birds. In that natural silence I waited to hear an ache from inside, to pounce on the first feeling of boredom or loneliness or anxiety, but none arose, and I let the nothingness fill me up. It’s okay, that nothingness. It feels paradoxically wholesome, like stepping back into a vast painting, shrinking into the deep shades of the background, still a part of the portrait, but no longer the focal point. 

It is good not to be the focal point in the painting all the time. It allows you to hear birds more clearly, and to smell coffee in all its bitterly aromatic splendour.

People tend to be defined by moments like the one we’re in, though I think a number of us haven’t yet met the moment that will define us. I haven’t seen the pain of disease up close, not yet, and the greatest trial of the last week has been deciding whether to stay in Dublin or return home. A question of where to quarantine, where to lie low for the next foreseeable few weeks, not a question of whether I ought to be fatally frightened of contracting the disease itself. The fallout has proved more tragic for me, as it has for most people I know. They haven’t lost loved ones, they’ve lost plane tickets and vacation plans. It is tragedy in miniature, by our Western standards.

Still, exorbitant amounts of money are lost. Businesses run under, livelihoods threatened. The financial toll will surely last years, and the worst is yet to come. In one great swoop, a faceless, dispassionate virus has forced us into hiding, and, in doing so, made a mockery of our capitalistic pursuits and constant, noxious drive to sustain monetary flow. If we continue to work, to prioritise external measures of productivity, we will make ourselves and those around us ill, potentially fatally. If we stay inside, pause our work and study, we protect what is truly valuable, but many of us will lose the foundations which have always informed our identity. It is a time in which we will confront ourselves, and it is petrifying, and it will incite anger and fear and disappointment, but will ultimately leave us all in the same place: alone, with ourselves, and with what remains when all else is taken away.

My dad always used to tell me that I can’t choose what happens to me, but I can choose how I react to what happens to me. As a stubborn and self-righteous fifteen year old, I thought the world was that almighty force which battered me around, made me miserable, and therefore entitled me to react like I was owed an apology. I understand now why people believe this, and must be taught out of it as they grow up. I understand why I believed this at the time, and scoffed at my dad’s wise counsel as if I knew that my petulant responses to my circumstances were entirely warranted, and not at all within my jurisdiction to control. Plainly, I couldn’t yet put forth the effort required for me to stop feeling sorry for myself. 

It is easier to react bluntly, out of raw emotion. It is easier to victimise yourself, to accept powerlessly that which is given, and react from your most animalistic, ego and fear-based inclinations. It is easier to act as though the bad things which happen to us are huge tragedies, the likes of which have never before been understood by another human being, and this allows us to sulk and moan and wallow in all that is wrong with the hand we are dealt.

Forgetting, all the while, that life is not a game which entitles you to win every time.

If anything, this is a great lesson in choosing your reaction and shaping your reality around it. On day one, my reaction was compulsive, ego-driven, accusatory. Devastated by the cancellation of every foundational involvement of my life here, I felt angrily paralysed by my choices, or lackthereof. Why is this happening to me? What the hell am I supposed to do now? The future looked awash with uncertainty and desolation. For the foreseeable month or more, everything is paused. Life is paused, external life, the world of relationships and class and work and parties and events and dates. Without these things, without the prospect of novelty imminently awaiting me, I didn’t know if I’d have a ground to stand upon.

I thought, Now it’ll just be me, floating, waiting. How depressing. How lonely. How I hate, loathe, and cower before that needling, indefinite ‘lonely.’ In addition to other ongoing personal events, interactions, unstable relationships, now this. Now I am to decide whether to move out of my cozy new apartment prematurely, and if I do, I will do it alone, during the frenzy of a burgeoning global pandemic. And even so, it would be to do the same thing which I will inevitably be doing if I were to stay here: self-isolate, wait, twiddle thumbs and restlessly check Instagram and maybe finish a puzzle or two. But I would be in the comfort of home, with mom and dad and my sister, and Homer the dog.

Or stay, and face the possibility that loneliness will creep up more often than I like, but be amongst my books and my candles and the space which I have created for myself here. Be near to a few friends, lighthearted ones who will make the time pass and make me laugh, too. Be in the city which I claimed for myself, not the one which claimed me. Choose independence, even in uncertainty, even when comfort and dependence on others will be so, so tempting. The image of my family seated on the big comfy couch, Homer nestled in beside my mom, old episodes of Gavin & Stacey on the television, inevitably plays on my mind. In the disruption of flights and national borders, the image feels fragile and faraway, another life, another world, one which isn’t always going to be as accessible as it was before. Everything lies in the balance, and I am here, largely on my own, choosing what I will do next. Choosing, above all else, how I will react.

On that first uncertain day, I chose to book a bus ticket to Cork, to be with a close friend and her family. I knew it was short-term, but a choice was made, and I was comforted by the finality of it, and by the knowledge of open arms awaiting me somewhere close by.

I called my dad on the bus. He is my sounding board for crises big and small. His advice is correct on a level that I don’t often wish to recognise. He always agrees with my gut in the cases of things that matter most, with the choices that tend to be uncomfortable for my head but most comforting to my soul. On the bus, I pressed my forehead against the window and listened to my dad tell me what I should do, clinging to his every word, to the very sound of his voice.

He read to me something called The ‘Scary Times’ Success Manual by Dan Sullivan. He could tell I was barrelling into a world of hurt and anxiety, I think, and as I’ve grown up, I’ve come to seek the same sort of comfort and guidance as he does for himself. So he read to me something which has brought him comfort, and it had the same effect on me.

The manual is comprised of ten points which provide counsel in times of crisis, scary times when humanity tends to behave in reactionary ways, often to their own detriment. My favourite is the last one:

“When times get tough, everyone has to make a fundamental decision: to complain or to be grateful. In an environment where negative sentiment is rampant, the consequences of this decision are much greater. Complaining only attracts negative thoughts and people. Gratitude, on the other hand, creates the opportunity for the best thinking, actions and results to emerge. Focus on everything that you are grateful for, communicate this and open yourself each day to the best possible consequences.”

There is unarguably a great deal of pain in the world right now, and I feel a lot of it in my own heart. But when I make the choice to feel gratitude, to remember this fundamental decision to be grateful rather than fearful, I will find peace. Even if it is a flash of peace, a moment of tranquillity in the simplest of gestures. The delicate smell of lavender, of orange blossom and basil, of coffee in the morning. 

I chose to stay in Ireland, for now. Everything is ‘for now’, and we are given a lesson on transience, because everything we know to be true is uncertain. We have no choice but to grow comfortable in uncertainty, to nakedly face the truth, which is this: we are but a fleeting facet of the natural world, and everything we think we own— all these aspects of our lives which we believe to be in our control— are borrowed, and on indefinite terms. Attaching ourselves to so many material items, to external sources of pleasure or value, will invariably lead to suffering. It is a great mistake, I think, to believe we own anything in this life. And it is life’s greatest pain, I am certain, having to learn to let go of these things which once looked like they belonged to us.

What we do possess, should we choose it everyday, is gratitude. And no one, not even a viral pandemic, can take that away from you.