Senior High CCE HBL Lesson 1

Instructions:
Read the article
Answer reflection questions

Panic, grief, then wonder: the virus has taken away my old life and replaced it with something new
Covid-19 means I’m getting to know my own house. It’s like it just stood patiently, waiting years for me to
properly inhabit it

Brigid Delaney
2nd Apr 2020
The Guardian
(link to the article:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/03/panic-grief-then-wonder-the-virus-has-taken-
away-my-old-life-and-replaced-it-with-something-new)

Everything, even the most chaotic events, have their particular List all the emotions that the
narrative and timeline. author experienced:

After the disbelief, then the panic, after the shock and the fear, Disbelief panic Shock fear dread
after days of being poleaxed by dread, and other days of being grief acceptance
overcome with a strange sort of grief (grief for what? Maybe our
old lives?), there comes a reluctant acceptance.

This acceptance is not an agreement or peace with the new What has the author accepted?
order, but a dawning realisation that life is radically changed.
Acceptance lies in acknowledging how little we can control. For He accepted the fact that he has to
now, tension exists in not knowing how long we will dwell in this stay home and isolate himself from
odd new world and what will happen to us while we’re here. the rest for an uncertain duration,
something that he has not
As we isolate ourselves and detach further and further from our experienced before and unfamiliar.
old lives, nostalgia is unavoidable. The things that induce longing
are strange.

Like yesterday, when someone posted on Twitter that it was five

weeks since three baboons escaped from a lab in Sydney’s
inner-west.

Five weeks? Five weeks? It feels like a different decade, another

era. The author identifies the
emotions that she has
Rather ridiculously, I was struck down by an intense wave of experienced. What emotions
nostalgia for the night the baboon story was the most exciting have and are you experiencing?
thing happening in Australia. There we were, a group of What event(s) or situation(S)
journalists, in the beer garden of a bar in Surry Hills farewelling a triggered the emotion(s)?
friend who was moving to Hong Kong – gone for a year at least. Excitement. Being able to exercise
more self control. More flexible use
The friend is now back from Hong Kong and in quarantine. We of time where I can catch up with
are all isolating in our houses, communicating by text and Zoom. my friends, health, flute playing
Who knows where the baboons are. Who cares? (yeap much more time to prac) and
studies.
Humid nights in bars, and rounds of cold beers, and sitting
crammed on the outside table, getting worked up about escaped The author mentioned that she
baboons feels like paradise, lost. felt an intense wave of nostalgia
- is there anything that you feel
For those of us who are most at home out in the world, whose nostalgic about?
hobbies are restaurants and bars, whose familiar places are
airports, whose actual houses are merely a place to sleep and do - Meeting up physically with
laundry, have found the order to stay at home has been a hard friends
one. - Having physical lessons
- Attending live concerts…. :
Home is out there, not in here. (
- Going to church
And so we miss our homes in the world, quite desperately.

Daily there are reminders of these homes: an old boarding pass

falls out between the pages of a book, a foreign coin is found in
the pocket of a winter coat, a faded receipt for a meal at a
favourite, now shuttered restaurant in Melbourne discovered at
the back of a drawer during an iso-decluttering spree. Each
brings back a memory of before.

Waking at 4am most nights, disoriented and confused, I keep

thinking: I’ve got to get home. Home to the friends and the
airports, and the cities, home to the restaurants, and the
beaches, and home to the art galleries, home to the pubs and live
music gigs, home to the friends’ houses, and home to my
parents, and home to the bars and the buses and trams. But of
course, I can’t. None of us can.

Each day I hear of more job losses, careers and business

wrecked in a day. I fret about the pandemic of loneliness. Last
week I got my first video-link funeral invitation. On Zoom I have
drinks with my school friends, work colleagues and friends
overseas. It cheers me up, but it reminds me of how much I miss
them and the world out there.

But something else is happening.

Just as it takes time for your eyes to adjust to the dark after
the midday sun, so it is with this. Of all the strange and
wondrous places to find yourself in, perhaps the strangest
yet is home.

I’m getting to know my own house. It’s like it just stood here
patiently, waiting for years for me to properly inhabit it. To move What are you doing to stay
in fully, to finally stay put. connected with your friends?

Yesterday I pulled out some knee-length weeds and really -zoom calls
noticed the soil for the first time – dry and pebbly. I joined -texts
Pinterest and fantasised about a garden. This for now is an -live rehearsals on Skype!!!
achievable dream, an activity allowed within the parameters of
the Public Health Act.

And I’m meeting neighbours – at a distance or on WhatsApp or

as I cycle past their homes. One of them, a complete stranger,
picked up some outdoor furniture for me because I don’t have a The author shared how she
car. I gave her a bottle of wine. We vowed one day to drink it learnt to get to know and
together. appreciate the things around her
more - her house, her
A man in my street had us over last week and lit a large fire in his neighbours, the sunset and
backyard. He made dinner that we ate on our laps, as the embers nature. How can you better
flew up in the cold wind. Maybe once upon a time the appreciate your house and
conversation might have been stilted, but we had something to family members more during
talk about now. I told him I was thinking of fostering a dog but this period?
needed a gate. He told me he’d cut his own gate in half, make
something secure and install it at my place. - By staying at home and
being thankful to what’s
Another neighbour has started a local bread run. On Sunday happening around us.
night he came around with a loaf of sourdough that was still warm
from the oven. He also dropped off some petrol and a whipper
snipper for the weeds.

And the sunsets here have been wild. We go down to the oval to
pause and watch them glow. Large, vivid, red and orange –
walking towards them feels like entering a cold inferno. At night
the sky is bright and full of stars.

The seasons are changing. I have time to sit under a tree and
watch the light filter through the leaves, casting shapes on my
arm. Soon the leaves will turn from green to red, and I’ll be here
to see it.

This morning there was frost on the ground, like a crust of

diamonds – brilliant for a minute under the sun before it melted
away.

I think of that Robert Frost poem, Nothing Gold Can Stay, and
how it pertains to not just the diamond lawn and technicolour
sunsets, but everything right now.

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.”

• Brigid Delaney is a Guardian Australia columnist

An excerpt from Aisha S. Ahmad’s article, ‘Why You Should

Ignore All That Coronavirus-Inspired Productivity Pressure’
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Why-You-Should-Ignore-All-
That/248366/?fbclid=IwAR2KuYUpmunSA_q-Ex-EsTuQB4Azea-
JX3a0Pf5qYNQj68WJdMjsoiZ34ac

Yet we are just at the beginning of that journey. For most people,
our minds have not come to terms with the fact that the world has
already changed. Right now, denial only serves to delay the
essential process of acceptance, which will allow us to reimagine
ourselves in this new reality.

On the other side of this journey of acceptance are hope and

resilience. We will know that we can do this, even if our
struggles continue for years. We will be creative and
responsive, and will find light in all the nooks and crannies. We
will learn new recipes and make unusual friends. And we will help
each other. No matter what happens next, together, we will be
blessed and ready to serve.

Where are you on this journey? Do you understand the gravity of

what is going on and how our lives would be changed?

We highly encourage you to do the following:

1. Build a team
Devise a strategy for social connectedness with a small
group of family, friends, and/or neighbors, while
maintaining physical distancing in accordance with
public-health guidelines.
2. Design a weekly schedule - wake up early and make
sure to allocate time for a range of activities (mental,
physical and social)
3. Be emotionally prepared for this crisis to continue for
12 to 18 months, followed by a slow recovery. If it ends
sooner, be pleasantly surprised. Right now, work toward
establishing your serenity, productivity, and wellness.