Mental Medicine in the Midst of Madness
Corona virus sucks! It’s heartbreaking when people die. I can scarcely watch the news coming out of Italy. People losing their jobs sucks. It means a crazy tension between hardship and hope. Social isolation is bad for some people; for the lonely, the elderly, those living in abuse. It just sucks.
It can be overwhelming. Going down the rabbit hole of despair however is not an option. We have to wipe hopelessness off the list of things to do.
I know we can’t just magically make unemployment, uncertainty and grief disappear. But we do need respite.
We do need to give our heart a break from heartbreak.
We need to mentally and spiritually pace ourselves through this global marathon.
Beauty is just the medicine. Some people have figured this out already. The folks in Wuhan figured this out early. during their Covid-19 shutdown. A cacophony of voices sang out from apartment blocks, unifying the isolated in uplifting songs.
Click here to hear Wuhan singing from their apartments.
“We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of infinite nature” Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Poet”.
Music is medicine. The Italians of course knew the power of this medicine. Who else could have communal opera during Covid lockdown?
Click here to hear Nessun dorma from a balcony in Florence.
Then it just got professional. Witness the Colorado Symphony who played online together.
Timeless sounds as timely solace.
One morning last week on ABC classic radio, the host thought we could all do with a sing along and played the Hallelujah chorus. It made me smile to think I was singing my heart out at the same time as other other Australians in their living rooms.
Fancy a sing-a-long, click here!
Physically distant, spiritually close.
Poetry is medicine. Patrick Stewart is reading a Shakespeare sonnet each day online. Hellloooo! Patrick Stewart, his voice is like sweet, oozing honey. Be still my heart.
Click here for a dose of Shakespeare by Patrick Stewart,mmmm!
What a double dose of beauty! Soul drenching words read in a voice of velvet.
Mine eye hath play’d the painter and hath stell’d
Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart;
My body is the frame wherein ’tis held,
And perspective it is the painter’s art.Big Will Sonnet 24
Other friends on Face Book are posting pictures of flowers and snow falling outside their window.
So when all gets a bit too much, prescribe yourself a big dose of beauty.
Play your favorite piece of music,
Click here to hear one of my favs.
read a beautiful piece of poetry (try Pablo Neruda),
dance and twirl,
do a virtual tour of a famous art gallery click her to find some
count the stars.
Take some advice from Anne Herbert in her article called “Handy Tips On How To Behave At The Death of the World” (1) :
Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.
by Elissa Macpherson
lover of Jesus, glitter, justice.