The greatest distance between two points

[dolorosa_12]

I was working in person in the office this morning, and when the other two colleagues scheduled to work with me today showed up, the three of us (Serbian, Australian, and American immigrants) spoke for two-and-a-half hours about the prospect of a wider war in Europe. I honestly don't know how anyone can be expected to work or focus under these conditions; I've been averaging about four hours' sleep on a good night for the past three weeks. Weirdly (or perhaps not if you know anything about my personality), I find this uncertainty much more unsettling than the thought of war. It always sounds melodramatic when I say this, but I genuinely made my peace with the prospect three years ago, and decided, with a kind of burning clarity, exactly what I would choose to do in such circumstances.

I am — as of 6.15pm on 3rd March, at least — genuinely impressed with how impressively the government here has been handling the situation. Apart from one misstep (come on, you invite half of Europe to your big crisis summit strategy session, and you don't include even one leader of a Baltic country?), I really can't see any cause for criticism. The time for behaving like this was three years ago, and the next best time was last year, but (at least as of right now), at the eleventh hour, at the edge of the abyss, most of Europe is doing the right thing.

Our government has achieved the somewhat miraculous feat of its actions being praised unanimously across the entire spectrum of newspapers and TV networks, the entire spectrum of British politics (apart from, as usual, the extremes edges of left and right) is basically united on this, and I would also say that they've got public opinion on their side as well. I'm genuinely astonished.

I hope everyone else is hanging in there.

Comments

[dolorosa_12]

It's just such a flood of horrors. I find it helps to focus on people and groups (whether at grassroots or political leadership level) taking specific concrete helpful actions, and take heart from their example to take action of my own. (That, and a relentless internal mantra of 'I have no control over what the United States does politically,' repeated endlessly whenever I find myself spiralling.) Helpless uncertainty is the worst thing of all.

I'm sorry you're also having trouble carrying on with the day-to-day stuff.