We adulate specialists and authority figures, sometimes to our harm. In this publication, you will read about the broad Covid situation from the perspective of a person who, though intensely specialized in a professional sense, is innately a generalist. By that I don’t mean that I have broad interests and take to many different forms of subject matter, though that’s certainly part of it. I mean that there is meaning to be found from a look at a situation in its entirety, that is impossible to find in the individual fragments.
The Covid situation is mired in tunnel vision. My great wish is to free your focus so that you to develop a concept of “health” free from that tunnel vision. Then, I think, you will be able to find the more joyful way I think we are designed to want.
Quick resume. I have gone down many roads in my life. Spiritually, at various times I practiced within a branch of Hinduism (lived in an ashram for a time), evangelical Christianity (that didn’t go too well but ultimately a major learning experience!), and participated in a series of lesser-known spiritual communities before consolidating and setting out as a spiritual independent. Formally, I studied painting, architecture, philosophy, music. I spent time at Penn, Berkeley, got a Ph.D.. Like the Kate Winslet character in the opening scenes of Little Children, felt like an anthropologist. Took being a progressive Democrat seriously, registered alarm, went to protests, wrote letters to my elected officials. Read widely on politics, medicine and its politics, healthcare and health, history and philosophy of science. Got myself healthy. Raised a daughter on the borderline of the spectrum, and was in a certain way raised by her at the same time. Edited scholarly journals, blogged about adolescent sexuality, taught music to kids and adults, fixed houses, designed gardens, cooked for parties, danced, kept my hands clean, got them dirty, wore rags, dressed up for the ball. Married, divorced.
My appearance says “aging hippy.” Everyone in my community talks to me as if it’s a forgone conclusion that I got the vaccine. Actually, no one knows for sure, because I haven’t told anyone. In this polarized environment, it would be too painful to let them think they get me when they don’t.
Thrown into this world in an emotionally chaotic and restrictive immigrant household, it has taken rather a while to punch my way beyond the four walls of a certain “the way things are.” It didn’t happen all at a go. I think I know something about how to get beyond the current impasse, and I bet you do too.
I am happy that you are here.
Kj Bohmgarden
