Day 39 Small is the New Big; or, A Journey of a Thousand Miles

I’m no runner. Never have been. Not b’shert, meant to be. But I do know the difference between a sprint and a marathon. A sprint is an as-fast-as-you-can one-shot—for a brief spell. A marathon is about stamina—staying the course over 26.2188 miles.

I know people who have trained for several marathons and nary a one of them began their training by running 26.2 and change miles on Day One. They build up to it.

Various news articles this morning seemed to beat the drum of an underlying theme that no one is naming directly yet.

Small is the new big.

The trouble with this is that there are sprinters and there are marathoners. They have two distinct abilities that really don’t meet anywhere except under the massive umbrella Running.

The sprinters want the economy to go, go, go right now this very minute in the hope of somehow picking up on the exhaust fumes which may remain of its earlier, and I’ll borrow a word from the pundits here, robust momentum. Think, large, broad house painter’s brush. Better, spray paint.

The marathoners also want the economy to go, but go slowly enough to grow itself back into its own natural, healthy momentum so that it works for everyone and risks no more lives than have already been at risk. Think, small, narrow detail painter’s brush. Easier to control.

Who’s right? Well, at the risk of sounding equivocal, they both are. And, just for kicks and giggles, they both aren’t. Here is where we’re getting into trouble again and again. Here is where the gotcha folks in the media, as opposed to the genuine journalists, are having a field day.

“The governors of New York and New Jersey, the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States, offered some encouraging statistics in their states’ battle against the coronavirus on Saturday, but they cautioned that they did not yet have the necessary resources to reopen their economies.”

Hear it? Yes, we want to begin to reopen the economy, and we can’t till we have what we need to do so. You might say, they’re laying tarps, taping woodwork, laying out the brushes, and getting everything ready for a new paint job. Small is indeed the new big.

One place where the marathoners seem to run in place, waiting for the light to change if you will, is on the subject of testing, and not just testing for the virus itself, but also testing for the antibodies that protect us from the virus.

I read the other day that there is actually plenty of testing material, but that what’s missing is the medical equipment to administer the tests. Swabs—in particular.

Small things are standing in the pathways of the spray painters, and the spray painters are starting to get loud and, in some cases—Michigan, anyone?—vicious. Go, Gretchen Whitmer!

For want of what is essentially a sterile Q-Tip, we daren’t go back to work? Talk about small.

“New estimates by researchers at Harvard University suggest that the United States cannot safely reopen unless it conducts more than three times the number of coronavirus tests it is currently administering over the next month.”

This is, sadly, why some gotcha journalism is necessary. “[F]ederal officials acknowledged that sloppy laboratory practices at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention caused contamination that rendered the nation’s first coronavirus tests ineffective.” Hush-hush much?

This is where small things make a big difference. I’d place my top bet, a quarter so you know, that what happened at the C.D.C. was due to the governmental pressure of hurry up, and not immorality.

Hurry up has cost us lives, among other things, in The Trump Pandemic. Something small made a big difference.

Here’s another small thing making a huge difference in Britain.

“One of those rushing to help has inspired the country. Tom Moore, a 99-year-old World War II veteran from Yorkshire, in northern England, has raised more than 25 million pounds—over $31 million—for the National Health Service by walking laps in his garden. His feat has led in Britain to call him a hero.”

He’s walking his own garden, with a walker, in full dress uniform, and is he magnificent. When I see his picture, I want to shout, “More Tom Moores!”

Steps. Veteran Moore is taking steps, one at a time, to cross his garden, and he’s dedicated each step to raising money to help the National Health Service.

Here’s another small item I noticed. In Israel, “An eclectic list of retail establishments will be allowed to reopen, including electrical and office supply stores, laundries, bookstores, housewares dealers and opticians. But malls will remain locked, meaning only permitted businesses with their own storefronts will reopen.”

Big retail, namely malls, will remain closed. Gathering to shop is too big a step right now. Who will begin to save the Israeli economy—and, I might add, our own—the entrepreneurs, small business not big business.

Training for a marathon? You betcha.

Here’s another small step, this one for sports fans who, apparently, are practically in withdrawal for their sports adrenaline fixes. “With so many sporting events canceled, moved or postponed, some desperate fans are turning to videos of marble competitions. ... It’s an international effort. ... [T]he races provide the same emotional experience as sports with human players. There are still underdogs and upsets — something to cheer about.” Anything for that kick. Hey, if it works, it works.

Yet another small step that has worked wonders in persons who already have Covid-19 is known as “proning, a technique in which patients are rolled onto their stomachs to help them take in oxygen.” Just taking the pressure off the back of a person suffering with the virus can help them breathe better.

Another, homier small step. A headline in The Times this morning read: How Covid-19 Is Making Millions of Americans Healthier. I had to read that one. In a nutshell, “At a scale not seen in over 50 years, America is cooking, a healthy move in the middle of a pandemic.” Such a simple thing. Even as small an action as cooking one more meal a day is making a big difference to the health of Americans.

In this news age of “mixing, matching, and twisting the facts,” as one writer had it this morning, the always insightful David Brooks wrote “The Age of Coddling is Over.” It’s well worth your reading time. Here’s some of his wisdom.

“I’m ... reminded of the maxim that excellence is not an action, it’s a habit. Tenacity is not a spontaneous flowering of good character. It’s doing what you were trained to do. It manifests not in those whose training spared them hardship but in those whose training embraced hardship and taught students to deal with it.”

Tom Moore is in the habit of excellence. That’s why he can walk in his garden and raise that kind of money.

Andrew Cuomo is doing what he was trained to do—taking the small steps to govern us New Yorkers kindly, gently, honestly with tenacity and truth no matter how hard the facts.

Immunity, that much-sought-after commodity that much of humankind is missing right now in the face of Covid-19, is a strange creature. Counter-intuitively, it comes because we are exposed to, and fight off pathogens, which creates antibodies to them thus immunity for us.

Or in David Brooks-speak, “I’m hoping this moment launches a change in the way we raise and train all our young, at all ages. I’m hoping it exorcises the tide of ‘safetyism,’ which has gone overboard. The virus is another reminder that hardship is woven into the warp and woof existence. Training a young person is training her or him to master hardship, to endure suffering and, by building something new from the wreckage, redeem it.”

In Pseudo-Chapter 64 of my intuitive translation of the Tao Te Ching called Tao for Now, I gave the chapter the title “God and the Devil are in the Details.” The footnote reads “God is in the details has been attributed to a number of different individuals, most notably German-born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969). The Devil is in the details has been attributed to wickedly mischievous lexicologist Ambrose Bierce (1842-1913). Both are, perhaps true.”

This is one of the famous chapters of Tao. In it “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one foot forward.” One. Just one. It could belong to anyone that one foot going forward. Those marathoners I know? They all swear by the discipline it takes to prepare for and run a marathon. They tell me that you run a marathon one step at a time. One of them told me, “You just put one foot in front of the other till you get to the end.”

Beloved, Covid-19, as much as we might like it to be a sprint, isn’t one. It’s a marathon. We’re all in training. Even if you’re a sprinter, you’re in training for a marathon. Just put one foot in front of the other, appreciate every small step you take along the way, cheer for the small steps of every person you see on the road, and keep on till we get to the end.

Dr. Susan Corso is a metaphysician and medical intuitive with a private counseling practice for more than 35 years. She has written too many books to list here. Her website is www.susancorso.com

If you have friends that would benefit by reading my words,
please feel free to forward this missive in its entirety.

If you are in need of support during this time of crisis,
visit here to start the process of working with me.