Risk Exhaustion

The last day of August already. The new abnormal drags endlessly into the fall. Trump is now claiming to be compassionate and skillful leader, the only one who can save us from the violence and chaos he fosters. Biden hopes to be the next FDR and rescue us with compassion and policies that support racial, economic and environmental justice. Biden is still up in the polls, but so was Clinton at this point four years ago.

I now instinctively (mostly) take a mask with me wherever I go. I don’t even think about going to places with lots of people. (Are there still places like that anyway?) But I’m wearing myself out trying to keep myself, and the members of my bubble, safe. It turns out that living with conscious risk is much more tiring than living with unconscious risk.

Life has always been a risky business. We’re never really safe. Crossing the street. Driving the car. Going down stairs. I remember once riding my mountain bike through a stretch of rocks and mud and standing water. Negotiating the treacherous terrain upright and wonderfully wet and muddy, I said to my friend: ‘Just think, when we’re old men we can have this kind of balance and coordination challenge just going down the stairs.’ And so it will be. If disease and accidents don’t get us first, old age certainly will.

The hardest thing is that, in the new social experience of pandemic, our risk calculations have to be made individually and consciously. In the past, our daily risk calculations were unconscious cultural assumptions that we rarely considered. We didn’t look at the accident rate in our county every morning before we drove to work. We didn’t wonder about the safety protocols at the hotel where we were planning to stay.

The human brain seems to have been designed for discerning immediate visceral risk. From instinctually fleeing large animals with sharp teeth, our ancestors progressed to avoiding large four-wheeled vehicles roaring down busy streets. (And the ones who did not make correct risk assessments didn’t survive to become ancestors.) We teach our children to look both ways when they cross the street, to avoid taking candy from strangers and to stay away from the edge in high places. This is ‘common sense’ and these constant calculations fade from our consciousness and allowed us to consider the more important things like whether we’ll have cold cereal or eggs for breakfast.

But the dangers and risks of our actual lives are far beyond what can be perceived viscerally. It has been this way for decades. Industrialization, global communications and the internet have brought us to a place of unprecedented interconnection. But the COVID crisis has brought our interconnection into sharper focus. This virus that is invisible and we can catch from people with no visible symptoms has brought us face-to-face with daily and intangible danger.

In this new place, without a clear social consensus of what is safe and what is not, we’re all required to make decision after decision to modify our behavior to keep us, and the people around us, safe. Though I only know one person who has died from COVID and only three or four who have had even a mild case, I am continually on guard.

Especially as COVID cases are staying relatively low here in Massachusetts and we all begin to move at least a little back toward normal, it requires constant assessment. While part of me would like to stay fully cocooned, another part is fed up with restrictions and caution and just wants to see my friends, go out to dinner and forget about it all. Is it really safe to have dinner at a restaurant if I’m outdoors? If someone offers me a glass of water in their backyard, is it safe to say yes? If I wear my mask, is it OK to go to Home Depot? To church? Do I need to wear my mask when I pass someone on the sidewalk if the wind is blowing strongly?

It’s exhausting. But here we are. Living our new normal lives. Taking solace where we can. Making decisions and meeting whatever comes next.

It will not always be like this.

It will always be like this.