Dave Owens, Attorney from San Ramon, California

The most positive thing about the Pandemic is that I’ve had time alone with my thoughts. That’s also the worst thing. It’s good in the sense that I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on the end of my 17-year relationship with my wife, understand the ramifications of my childhood, all that fun stuff.

But… it also allows my mind to wander, to go to dark places, to engage in all or nothing thinking (as they call it in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.)  Sometimes the CBT, as they call it, doesn’t work like in the books and you can feel hopeless, in despair. It doesn’t help when you step outside the house in the middle of a Pandemic and the California skies are orange from forest fires. You can’t help but feel like you’re living in a post-apocalyptic movie sometimes.

It’s good in the sense that I’ve been able to refocus, understand what relationships are important, as I’ve tried to cut out negativity in my life. That also means certain relationships have been fractured. I don’t care much about a person’s politics, what they believe about abortion, what they think the marginal tax rate should be, whether they believe in a stronger military presence overseas - I’d rather talk about basketball, books, movies, something where we can find commonality or have arguments with no stakes - but I do care about civility and treating people the way you were supposed to be treated.

You know, the Golden Rule. What I’ve realized is that a lot of the people I grew up with, back in the Rust Belt, are Trump. He just gave them a license to be their true selves. Power reveals as Robert Caro, the biographer of the great Lyndon Johnson books said, and the power Trump acquired unleashed a xenophobia, nativism, racism, and a total disregard for civility that was hiding in the shadows all along.

My 20-year high school graduation in Elkhart, Indiana (go Blue Blazers) is approaching and I’m debating whether I should go home for that or whether I really have a home now.

 Truth is I feel more at home in my community in San Ramon, California (I’ve lived in the Bay Area for 13 years since I moved out here for law school.)  In many ways I feel like the Pandemic has caused me to reckon with the past.  But it’s also made me realize that home is really just something I long for, not something that’s really there.

I did a meditation this year on the Calm app where it talked about Hiraeth, a Welsh word/concept that means you’re nostalgic for a place you can never return to or a place that never existed at all. This isn’t ending anytime soon, so I’ll definitely have time to sort through my thoughts and emotions. Maybe I’ll find the answer, or just come up with more questions.