Stressed? Skip Yoga & Watch a Baby Panda Sleep Instead
Hello, and welcome to Short & Snappy, new newsletter by me, Rebecca Fishbein. Last week, I dug into Below Deck, the only good quarantine show. Today, I’m going to talk about my new meditation routine, which exclusively involves watching a small baby animal sleep all day.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been feeling very anxious for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on. I read on the Google that a good way to combat stress and anxiety is mindfulness, which can be achieved via methods like meditation and yoga, so I attempted to quell some of my never-quiet brain by doing a couple Yoga With Adriene videos on YouTube. Adriene is an angel-human who lives in Austin and makes free gentle yoga videos, and I love her. What I love less, though, is actual yoga, which it turns out is hard to do after seven straight months of sitting on the couch watching The OC. After three sun salutations and a pigeon pose, my hips cried out for death, and while the pain temporarily distracted me from my stress cycle, in the end I felt a lot more sore than mindful.
Next, I tried a YouTube meditation video, but ocean sounds are much less soothing than they are boring when you are in your apartment and not at the beach. When that failed, I tried a guided meditation video, but I got lost in an imaginary hallway the guide asked me to conjure up and that did nothing to help my stress levels. So, instead, recently I turned to the only calming thing out there: the National Zoo’s panda cam.
In August, National Zoo giant panda Mei Xiang gave birth to baby panda, which is no small feat if you know how pandas reproduce (poorly). And since the zoo has two ever-running cameras in the pandas’ enclosure, I’ve been able to watch this little creature develop from a creepy mole rat thing to a fluffy little wiggling ball. It has been a delightful journey, and though there was a small hiccup in my affection toward the baby when I found out he was a boy panda, I have learned to overcome my biases and love him anyway.
LOOK AT HIM WIGGLE:
LOOK AT HIM CRAWL:
LOOK AT HIM NAP ON A SOFT TOWEL:
LOOK AT HIM GO ON A FIELD TRIP:
LOOK AT HIM GET A SHOT! EVEN THOUGH HE HAS A BOO BOO, HE IS VERY BRAVE!
Every day, when I need a small break from work and the virus and the fires and the election and the ever-impending doom settled over every prospect of the future, I take a few minutes to watch the panda cam. Sometimes the panda cuddles with his mom, a balm in a time with no hugs for humans. Sometimes he wiggles his feet and shows us his belly. Sometimes he wriggles on the ground in some vague attempt to crawl. Mostly, he naps.
I watch him sleep on camera like a Truman Show devotee, momentarily forgetting all that aforementioned doom while his tiny baby eyes flutter and his tiny baby paws twitch as he has tiny baby panda dreams. I text my roommate when the baby kicks his little leg in the air: “Panda Cam. NOW.”
In a few years, the baby panda will be a grown panda and therefore much less cute. They’ll ship him back to China, as mandated by the terms of China’s panda loan to the U.S. (I’m not kidding, this is real). Two National Zoo baby pandas have already broken my fragile heart. I know not to get too attached.
For now though, the panda cam is a bright light in a bad time, like the Shedd Aquarium penguins and those wild goats that took over a town in Wales. One foot wiggle = 75 sun salutations, no broken hips. Sorry Adriene, I swear you are great. But the panda is better, even if he is a boy.
Catching up on the news
There is simply too much news. Notably, we’re five days out from the 1000-year-long election and the pollsters are fighting with each other on Twitter, which is both annoying and very funny. Other than that, pandemic still on and getting worse, Amy Coney Barrett’s on the Supreme Court, California’s still on fire, the police still need to be defunded, Trump’s actively destroying the rainforest, etc. everything is bad. Watch the panda cam!
Oh my, where ever did Tucker Carlson’s SMOKING GUN HUNTER BIDEN DOCUMENTS VERY REAL AND IMPORTANT go?
This is a deeply chilling graphic showing how COVID-19 spreads through the air indoors.
Harry Styles is the only good celebrity.
Kim K went on a little trip!
A man in the Bronx fell into a sinkhole full of rats, if you like metaphors.
Here are some good blogs and features I am reading
“In Northern Kenya, the Climate Crisis Shifts Gender Roles” — Foreign Policy
“Why Reopening Schools Has Become the Most Fraught Debate in the Pandemic” — The American Prospect
“AOC’s Next Four Years” — Vanity Fair
“The Game That Ruins Friendships and Shapes Careers” — Foreign Policy
“In New York, Roommates Make a Comeback” — New York Times, with a very special cameo by my roommate, Mike Hurowitz!
My roommate talked to the NY Times about our pandemic best friendship 😭 💕nytimes.com/2020/10/27/rea…And now for some good tweets (rare!!!!)
Go vote!