There have been two words that have been echoing in my mind this past week if only to give me comfort: “This belongs.”
Every single plan I had has been cancelled. The classes I planned to take at Georgetown University this semester. Volunteering at the Children’s National Hospital has been indefinitely postponed. Yoga teacher training has gone virtual. And forget about learning to play the piano.
Other friends have felt the disruption deeply, too.
Anxiously deciding whether or not to cancel a bridal shower, knowing their closest family members wouldn’t be able to travel from Florida. Forgoing knocking on doors to campaign for their first local Democratic primary. Reluctantly opting to stay away from their 81-year old mother, who lives in Boston alone, to avoid accidentally exposing her to a dangerous virus. And skipping their 41st birthday trip to Tulum, Mexico with their college bestie.
Everything has been cancelled. I mean, everything.
As the beautiful humans we are, our first reaction expectedly could be: “Why me? Why now? Why is this happening? Why is everything being wiped away?”
To some, it surely has felt like a tidal wave has come and scooped each of us up individually and thrown us into the ocean — and there is no land in sight.
And so some of us may start swimming directionless, clinging to a sense of control. While others of us may choose to float. Float until the wave finally pushes us along in the way we need to be going. And others may flail in the water, gasping for air, resisting the moment, causing the waves to pummel us even further.
No matter how we face it, we are all dealing with a deep loss of control and security — and that feeling can shake us at our core.
The things in our life that make us feel safe — a job, being able to pay for our cost of living, taking care of our children and parents, having enough food, our community of friends — when stripped away can easily make us feel unsettled and anxious. Never mind trying to digest every headline as the avalanche of news overwhelms us.
And we will undoubtedly have the urge to make sense of all of it.
I have asked myself those questions, too. Trust me. Because it all seems widely unfair to suffer loss atop of loss, atop of loss, atop of loss — and in many ways, it’s only just begun for so many us. We are entering a new way of living, some of us will be able to keep our jobs and others won’t. There will be loss of health care, and available day care for working parents, children who will miss countless weeks of school, small businesses that will close, graduations that will be delayed, and so much more.
Things that some of us had been waiting on for years to do will now have been pulled away, cast aside, torn away from us. And it will hurt. A lot, probably.
We will resist it at first, pushing forcibly back, uttering to ourselves, “No, no, no, no, no. That’s not how this is supposed to go.” Maybe adding an emphatic, “NO!” for good measure.
But the truth is under the guise of a job, or a relationship, or a mortgage, we live with uncertainty every day.
We’re all one decision, one moment away from having a different life, of losing our livelihoods or our homes. All of us. Even someone who is running for President of the United States. Someone must always lose.
So, perhaps this moment can serve as an invitation for all of us. We can decide to choose to surrender to our new reality, acknowledging that this period of uncertainty belongs too. And to gently ask ourselves with great curiosity over our present experience, “Why are you here? What are you here to teach me?”
I don’t have a complete answer just yet, and I imagine, for each of us, that answer will be different.
But surely this is an awakening.
A moment to test the structures we have placed in our lives, and that we have relied upon daily, and inquire if they are in fact sound.
Somewhere in there we will discover our own work, which if examined carefully could possibly open new doorways for another way of living and being in our healthy and lovely lives.
For now, all I know is that we are in a collective pause — together. And the race of life has become a slow, causal walk for some of us.
What we may find is we are met with the unfamiliar feeling of stillness. We are met with ourselves.
So when you reach that inevitable moment maybe ask yourself: “How do you want to spend your time? Who do you want to spend your time with? What have you ignored until now? What is the next small thing that you must do?”
Because if you can answer that, what a gift that would be for us all.
