How long before it feels normal to wander around a store looking at things, picking them up and putting them down? I went to the office supply store over the weekend, just to remind myself that I could; I bought a box of pens, a binder, a stack of legal pads, things I would need eventually if not yet. I met a friend for coffee.
My city still has a mask mandate, and I am glad; the state pulled them prematurely, I think. Why waste the opportunity to link it to a metric, like percentage of adults vaccinated, or case rate? Why not spend a little political capital to protect folks who haven't yet been able to get vaccinated, or the permanently immunocompromised? Why not at least stress a responsibility for the not-yet-vaccinated to keep masking a little longer?
Well. If we are all about personal choice now... it's an option to avoid errands in the suburbs, I suppose. I hope that is enough for the vulnerable.
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I am not vulnerable; I'm now multiple weeks post-second-jab. And yet I'm still getting used to being indoors around the unmasked. And yes, you do still see them, even in buildings where the proprietor requires them. Of these, I am disappointed to report, the place where I saw the most flouting of the stated rules? Church. On the two separate days I attended after my return, masks were ostensibly still required; the archbishop issued appeals reminding people to cover their faces for just a little longer; and yet on my first day back I was surrounded in my assigned pew-seat by people who pulled their masks right off their faces when they sat down.
Gross.
I feel physical revulsion, partly because of the clouds of aerosols that I am now hyper-aware that everyone is exhaling all the time, but also a spiritual revulsion: because of the more acute knowledge I now have about the general regard for the sick and poor (or even for simple obedience and charity). It's going to take me a while to get over that, probably longer than it will take for me to stop thinking about clouds of aerosols.
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The bright side is that if I had any compunction whatsoever about staying away all this time and never attending Mass indoors, I don't have it now. It wasn't a safe place, and many of the people there were not safe people.
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But I am safer now, and I know it. "I am trying to be brave and forgiving," wrote a vaccinated commenter on this post by Jamie, and what else is there to do but to try to do the same? What else positive, I mean?
If I'm vaccinated, and if I've already made up my mind not to bring my unvaccinated children to Mass yet—and I have indeed made up my mind about that, see above re: unsafe people—the state of other people's faces is no longer actionable information. I am not tasked with the responsibility of reportage or sampling; deciding is over, so I don't need to continue studying my surroundings; no one has asked me, "Erin, next time you go to Mass, will you look around and tell me if it looks safe?" And anyway, "looks safe" is meaningless now.
So... it's time for the practice of custody of the eyes.
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Custody of the eyes: Take upon yourself the responsibility of not being bothered by the sight of someone else, by focusing elsewhere.
"Don't stare," we tell little children who are just learning that people can appear to us many different ways, sometimes startling ones. This idea is not just for children.
It's good for us, if we are tempted to indignance or annoyance or anger when we see someone breaking some kind of rule or norm, to mind our own business. I'm not saying that everyone should always mind their own business. Some people are explicitly tasked with enforcement of important rules, and occasionally charity or justice demand the intervention of bystanders. But if it's not my job to intervene... ...and there isn't any immediate harm to another person whom I could realistically protect... and if I can sense that the effect it's having on me is mainly indignance and rash judgment... yeah. It's better to keep your eyes on your own work, and remember all your own flaws and how you would like to be judged by them were they known.
It's often better for the other as well. If you're suddenly aware that you stand out for some reason, and you don't need help (or help won't help) isn't it a relief when people pretend not to notice? If you are an inexperience mother trying to get the snuffling baby latched, or the parent of a suddenly weeping toddler, or an adolescent or adult who bursts into tears in public: averted eyes are often a blessing. There is nothing at all offensive about a hungry baby or a toddler meltdown or an attack of overwhelming grief: they are all parts of life. But the fear of being shamed is real. A lot of the things that we would like to shame each other for are not, if you knew the internal state of the person, worthy of applying shame: and even if shame were deserved, it is rarely helpful.
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A long time ago, I once got into an Internet discussion (not an argument, it remained friendly) with a fellow Catholic who was honestly, in the technical sense, scandalized by naked people in locker rooms.
I thought she was kidding at first, but no: she thought it was a terrible breach of modesty and propriety that said something about the community of people at the pool where she had recently started to take her kids swimming. She was horrified that so many women and girls took off their clothes, even their underwear, where other locker room users could see them, before putting on their other clothes. Not only that, sometimes people would walk to and from the showers without even wrapping up in a towel, and this upset her. She would have liked if there had been signs posted forbidding nakedness in the locker areas.
At the time, I was swimming two or three times a week at an urban YMCA, and I found this absolutely fascinating. What on earth did she think the locker room was for?
I asked what she thought people ought to do, and she answered that they should change in the curtained changing stalls.
Hmm. "What if the curtained changing stalls are all full?" I asked, and she said that the proper thing to do under those circumstances was either to wait, or perhaps to change in the toilet stalls.
A little more querying and I learned that she had not, in her life, spent a lot of time in a variety of different locker rooms, and the ones that she had spent time in were large and comfortable ones with an abundance of individual curtained changing stalls and separate curtained showers. Consequently, the culture in those gyms, at least in the women's and girls' locker rooms, it would have seemed gratuitously exhibitionist to change out in the open among the lockers. You could always wait just a few minutes for one to open up, and if you were in a hurry, you could always lock yourself in one of the many individual toilet stalls.
My gym is small and the locker room has zero changing stalls and only two toilets. "How many toilet stalls are there in your gym locker room?" I asked. "What if everybody changed in there? Would there be any left for someone who needed to use the toilet?" And she paused, because she had not considered this. (Really!)
Sometimes you have to take responsibility for your own comfort, and extend to other people the courtesy of ignoring them. I think locker rooms are a good example of these, and . Clearly there isn't a uniform sense of what is and isn't proper. If there are a limited number of private spaces available, why not leave them free for the occasional person who feels a real need for shelter from staring—there are lots of reasons why someone might, like trauma or internalized body shame or a health issue—and just offer everyone around you a modicum of privacy by keeping your eyes more or less to yourself?
Anyone who is tempted to annoyance, repugnance, tale-bearing, or judgmentalism might find it a useful self-discipline, beyond the locker room.
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The practice of keeping your eyes on your own work, laudable as it may be in some circumstances, exists in tension with our role as our brother's keeper, of course. We need to check in with each other, sometimes step in to correct or intervene or offer a hand of assistance, or seek the help of someone else appointed for the task. And sometimes we have a special responsibility to act, though far less often than some folks seem to think they do. I think it can be hard to know when to act and when to mind your own business, sometimes, and people can err in good faith both one way or the other.
Still... the good faith being perhaps not sufficient, it's necessary. So I'm going to watch out for that little voice of indignance that creeps up from time to time... and my resolution is to refuse to listen to it. Custody of the heart comes first.
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