WE WERE MERELY FRESHMEN

I just ended my therapy session. I talked about how irritable I've been. Lucas was late to meet me last weekend and I lost my temper. I've never liked when people arrive late, I think it's irresponsible and being responsible and accountable is kinda one of my criteria of being a decent human being. However, in the past week or so, I've been just tired out from work. I've taken up more shifts than originally allocated because I need to save the money. Working at my job is physically tiring, I'm on my feet for seven hours, and our masks always have to be on. The fact that I have to wear a mask the entire time already adds a discomfort and ensures shallow breathing for half my day, but what takes the cake is seeing crowds of people who don't follow protocol for social distancing, who wear their masks the incorrect way of only covering their mouths, etc. I don't like people who make light of the pandemic, we've seen thousands of unnecessary deaths, and if you insist on doing your shopping in person instead of the online options that are readily available, at the very least do your part to keep yourselves and the people around you safe. My therapist came up with five methods to check in with myself when I'm on the floor working, I must remember to try them out and check back in with her on their efficacies. 

For some reason, this morning I thought of something I'd heard from Khalis when we were much younger. He's a Muslim, and at the time we had this conversation, I think I was questioning religion and faith. Khalis said he'd watched a video in which scientists played a Muslim prayer or gospel song, and measured the heart rates of control groups of people, finding out that the Muslim prayer had a calming effect and that the people were "at peace". He brought it up as if it was conclusive evidence that Islam was the one true faith, and that even science could back it up. I looked at him, with what I'm pretty sure was puzzlement, and let it go, but what I was thinking was, that's not a scientific experiment. Or at least the results are not very conclusive of much. They didn't play any other religious tunes or hymns from any other faiths to compare the results with, they didn't play even non-religious songs in comparison. For all you know, it could just be that the prayers were low-pitched, and low-pitched sounds from any instrument and in any language would have calming effects. Khalis is a Malay man, though, and if there's one thing I know about Malay men, they hate being proven wrong by Malay women, so I kept quiet. Why am I thinking about that now? Who knows.